
COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Black Swans 



The Black Swans 

And Other Friends 
Indoors and Out 

By 
• Alvin Howard Sanders 

Author of "The Road to Dumbiedykes," 

<'At the Sign of the Stock Yard Inn." 

Editor "The Breeder's Gazette." 




Chicago 

Breeder's Gazette Print 

1918 



-^^f^^ 

w^^ 



Copyright, 1918 

Sanders Publishing Company 

All Rights Reserved 



OtC -2 1918 



CI. A 5 1) 6 7/7 9 



\^ 



V 



Introduction 

THE kindly reception given a little 
book of sketches published two years 
ago under the title ''The Road to Dumbie- 
dykes" must be my only apology for com- 
plying with various requests from perhaps 
over-partial friends to prepare a companion 
volume in similar vein. The first was sent 
forth with more or less trepidation because 
such work is entirely at variance with the 
weightier matters that have for so many 
years occupied my close attention, and I am 
equally in doubt as to whether or not the 
publishers are justified in permitting "The 
Black Swans" to see the light. 

Needless to say both are merely ^'by- 
products " of idle hours; of days spent 
primarily in quest of rest and relaxation; 
just rambling thoughts jotted down from 
time to time with no particular regard to 
orderly sequence, and with slight expecta- 
tion that they will be taken very seriously. 
Their preparation is of course merely a 
casual manifestation of an ever ready re- 
sponse to the lure of the out-of-doors. 
T>, The Author 

DUMBIEDYKES, 

October 15, 191 8 



**Thovgh /or me no fiocks unnumbered^ 
Grazing Gallia's pastures fair 
Breathe heavily beneath their swelling Jieeces, 
Still I at least am free from care.'*' 

— Horace. 



Contents 



CHAPTER 

I. 


PAGE 

The Building of the 




Nest 


I 


II. 


Behind the Backlog 


IS 


III. 


Half-Hours with Mer 






cuRY AND Vulcan . 


31 


IV. 


Low Tides 


45 


V. 


The Case of Kate . 


61 


VI. 


Smoke of the H-F Bar 


73 


VII. 


Told in the Firelight 


89 


VIII. 


"Tick-Tock" Talk . 


103 


IX. 


An August Night . . 


123 


X. 


Socks and Flocks . . 


137 


XL 


The Pig in a Poke . 


149 


XII. 
XIII. 


A Pumpkin and a Princi 
The Flames that 


5 161 




Clarify 


179 


XIV. 


A Farewell ''Hike" 


189 


XV. 


''Taps" 


203 



M<^)'=^%^j 




THE BLACK SWANS 

CHAPTER I 

The Building of the Nest 

THE world goes motoring heedless 
by along a narrow country road 
that disappears among the trees. The 
vine-clad walls, the moss-green roof 
and sheltering oaks accomplish their 
intended purpose. The little white- 
arched gateway too is camouflaged by 
all-embracing shrubbery. But those 
who care and enter understandingly 
are welcome as the flowers that greet 
them lovingly as they pass within. 
And if by chance you wander by along 
a walk that passes on the opposite, 
the sunset side, an ivy-posted snow- 
white pergola projected from the 

[I] 



The Black Swans 



greenery will lead you through the 
hedge-row to the door. Those burr- 
oak trees that overhang the eaves and 
guard on either side the entrance-way, 
God planted many years ago and 
waited. Sooner or later some one was 
certain to look at them and compre- 
hend. And when we found them first 
I knew at once a mile-stone in a jour- 
ney had been set. And so one day 
there came into the world our Dumbie- 
dykes. 

Just a little temple in a grove! 
Just a little shrine at which the deities 
that rule the out-of-doors are wor- 
shipped. Just a little place to call a 
country home! Just a little port of 
friendly call for those who have it on 
their chart! And is that not enough? 

No acres broad extending far afield. 
No great red barns nor cattle-yards 
nor granaries; no silos, plows nor 
harvesters; no retinue of help nor 
tenant cottages ! Why should we covet 
these .^ For on the outside have we 

[2] 



The Building of the Nest 



not the sunshine and the storms, the 
song birds and the stars; and have 
we not within the black swans with 
their wings of fire, the friendly old 
four-posted clock and books that live 
through all the generations ? 

I had told the architect first of all 
to build for us a good big generous 
fireplace with a chimney that would 
not fail to draw; and then put walls 
around it surmounted by a wide, low 
roof with overhanging eaves. You 
will see the point. I wanted to hear in 
comfort by the fire the rain drops 
dripping all around outside. But if 
you are ever called upon, as I was 
after the little patch of woodland in 
the rough was bought, to plan the 
house intended for a snug retreat from 
city sights and sounds, do not make 
this one mistake. Let the women-folk 
in on it early. If you don't you will 
have to do so at some little extra cost 
later on, as I did. They know a lot 
more than you do — or they think 

[3] 



The Black Swans 



they do — which in all arguments af- 
fecting domestic arrangements comes 
to the same thing, and usually they 
will be right and you will be wrong. 
So compromise matters right at the 
outset by doing just what they tell 
you to do; and yet in giving them the 
reins in this building business in re- 
spect to certain things in which they 
have a natural, and It seems an in- 
herently intelligent Interest, if you 
have a hobby of your own just Insist 
upon riding it yourself while they are 
astride their own. 

It so happens that my own special 
obsession in this home-making proposi- 
tion Is an open fire, and in this par- 
ticular case the builder to my mind 
has scored success complete. It Is the 
best fireplace I know. It Is broad 
and deep and lets me do the smoking; 
and I will also add that the creator 
of our little design did really well 
in other details. The outside eleva- 
tion is generally well regarded. The 

[4] 



The Building of the Nest 



generous porch, the living room, the 
stairs and sleeping quarters are not 
seriously faulted. The dining room 
was, and is yet, small, too small for 
general entertaining, but there are but 
two of us left now, and with the lapse 
of years our visitors seem to be 
narrowing down to just a few of those 
we love the best, so that the very 
coziness of the little nook contributes 
perhaps whatever charm it may pos- 
sess. The door that opens towards the 
little garden on the east is guarded by 
mock oranges now reaching upward 
to the roof, laden each May with 
heavily scented bloom; a favored leafy 
canopy for nesting birds. Along the 
casements on the south rare holly- 
hocks send up each year the brilliant 
stalks so loved by busy "bumble" 
bees. 

The trouble was the architect and 
myself both forgot about the kitchen. 
That is, I forgot it altogether, and he 
very nearly. He did "come to" long 

[5] 



The Black Swans 



enough, however, to provide a two-by- 
four corner somewhere about the prem- 
ises which I remember was labeled on 
the blue print "Kitchen." Billy was 
in the hands of nurses at the time and 
more interested in getting well than 
in architectural drawings, and as we 
wanted first of all a place where she 
could soon enjoy the sun and air 
during a prospectively extended con- 
valescence, I gave the word and ground 
was broken for the big fireplace, kitch- 
enette and all. Needless to say the 
original culinary department in later 
years was converted into a generous 
butler's pantry, and a sure-enough 
kitchen added, where Mary now pre- 
sides with just pride in commodious 
surroundings and sings, as she works, 
the song that first made Chauncey 
Olcott's reputation. 

It takes two hearts to make a home. 

Architecturally speaking the kitchen 

is one, the open fire the other. Both 

of these now work as one at Dumbie- 

[6] 



The Building of the Nest 



dykes, with a common purpose — the 
comfort of those they serve. 

The chimney breast that forms the 
setting for the fires I love so well 
was built of the long flat two-by- 
twelve inch mottled Roman bricks. 
It is a trifle over four feet high and 
seven and a half in width. The fire- 
place proper is four by two feet six. 
The interior depth two feet. The fire- 
floor, of the same brick, set on edge, 
extends outward sixteen inches to form 
the hearth. The shelf at the top is a 
twelve-inch piece of oak with plain 
moulding below, without carving or 
ornamentation of any sort. The pro- 
portions are believed to be good, and 
the general effect is one of solidity and 
practical utility for the purpose in- 
tended. The andirons sweep forward 
first, then back and out again in 
graceful curves. The fender is of iron 
and a big steel screen arrests the 
sparks. And then, of course, tongs, 
poker, shovel, and a little broom. Just 

[7] 



The Black Swans 



why the shovel I do not know. Per- 
haps some one uses it. I never do. 
The ash-dump relegates the shovel, 
I should say, to the limbo of the dino- 
saurian. Anyhow, I don't want the 
ashes all removed. 

Each newly lighted fire should be 
builded always on the memories of the 
last. 

And now about the swans, our two 
black swans, that long have made 
their home, and have contributed in 
no small degree to the making of the 
home, at Dumbiedykes. We have 
never had detailed information as to 
their remote origin; nor can I say that 
we have had any special curiosity 
upon that score. Notwithstanding 
their unusual character, it has sufficed 
to know that they came to us with the 
first building of the fire upon our 
hearth and still remain to minister 
unceasingly and most effectually to 
our peace of mind and bodily comfort; 
and the darker the day or the colder 
[8] 



The Building of the Nest 



the world outside the more certain 
their ready response to our appeal. 
Furthermore, unlike those other fabled 
ornithological wonders, the great rocs 
told of in the "Arabian Nights," 
which only appeared when sent for, 
these swans are ever with us and are 
indeed at no time parted from one 
another. In fact, they are inseparable, 
useless each without the other. Year 
after year they stand patiently side by 
side waiting to do our bidding, and the 
value of the service they have rendered, 
and are yet to render, who can cal- 
culate? Assuredly I cannot. 

Men who are supposed to know 
about such things tell me that these 
birds probably came originally from 
the North. They have even gone so 
far as to assert that in all human prob- 
ability they hark back to a primeval 
home located, say about latitude 47° 
40" north and longitude 93° 20" west 
of Greenwich, and if you will turn to 
your map you will see that this fixes 

[9] 



The Black Swans 



the earlier habitat of these mystic 
swans of ours somewhere in the iron 
environment of the Mesaba Hills. 

They sing not, neither do they swim; 
they eat not, neither do they drink; 
they fly not, neither do they walk, 
these swans mysterious; but they have 
a certain wondrous, priceless power 
which is never invoked in vain. At a 
given signal they appear with flaming 
wings and you have only to resign 
yourself to the magic spell of the light 
they radiate on such occasions to 
leave your cares at once behind. You 
may then be borne aloft and far away, 
across immeasurable heights and 
depths, over mountains, lakes and 
seas, over fields and forests, back into 
the remotest reaches of the past, or 
forward into the illimitable vistas of 
the future. Such is the boon bestowed 
on those who really know and under- 
stand these black-swan andirons of 
our open fire. They wait only the 
striking of the tiny match that lights 
[lol 



The Building of the Nest 



the forest-born burden on their backs 
to bear you where your fancy leads; 
and presently the old clock in the 
corner there will strike, and bring 
your fireside travels to a happy end. 

I am not altogether certain, even 
after the lapse of many years of close 
companionship with these two faithful 
friends, as to which has really con- 
tributed most to the sum total of life, 
the fireplace or the clock. Close analy- 
sis of the psychology of the situation 
would, I fancy, assign first place in our 
affections to the flame upon the hearth, 
but through the darker days and frosty 
nights of the early spring and fall, 
when the glowing logs have first put 
one in the proper mood, there would 
still be something lacking but for the 
old clock's soft-voiced measured mark- 
ing of the hours. 

It is not one of those massively grand 
affairs with golden chimes and shining 
brass securely boxed in a mahogany 
mausoleum with a time-lock on the 

[II] 



The Black Swans 



plate-glass door. We have one of 
those too, in town, a very ornamental 
piece of furniture, to be sure, but no 
Intimate of mine. It's too infernally 
exclusive. You can't get near it. A fine 
Swiss watch kept in a fire-and-burglar- 
proof safe would be quite as sociable. 
Not so this dear old-fashioned thing 
that came to live with us at Dumbie- 
dykes. You have seen clocks like it. 
Our grandfathers knew them well. 
We ought to know them better. Simple 
works, mounted on a shelf behind a 
dial. Big, square, iron weights operated 
by chain and pulley. A long wooden 
pendulum with its metal disc swaying 
lazily back and forth between four 
open posts, some seven feet in height. 
Nothing comes between you and itself. 
It is there, alive, close to you. 

I am not sure but it has altogether 
the most agreeable personality of any 
member of the household. Its poise 
is so perfect, its voice is never raised 
in anger nor suppressed in sullen 

[12] 




The Clock 



The Building of the Nest 



silence. Rain or shine, day or night, 
in storm or calm, its drowsy tick-tock 
talk goes on forever; and when at 
night the firelight shadows play around 
its face, its subtle, soothing power is 
at its best. 

And there is a picture painted on the 
dial. You know it well. I scarce need 
tell about it. The same that has been 
painted on clock faces ever since men 
first became familiar with red-roofed 
gabled houses, with purling streams, 
birds, flowers and trees, for back- 
ground. Once I was well acquainted 
with another clock that stood upon 
an old-time kitchen shelf. I don't even 
know who has it now. I wish I did. 
I would go a long way to see it. And 
yet, what would be the use, for is it 
not before me now? Can one forget 
such things? The peaceful landscape 
done in colors gay upon its dial is 
likely badly faded now. And there 
was a little church in the background. 

[13I 




CHAPTER II 

Behind the Backlog 

A GREAT day that when the storm- 
doors and windows all come down 
and we let the sunlight in. This cere- 
mony is commonly celebrated in April. 
Of course various exploring expeditions 
always precede the first real lighting 
of the fire, and the actual starting of 
the clock. These must wait yet a little 
while. But the knowledge of the certain 
joys they are to bring is ours already. 
Andy, the watchman, tells us that 
the snow along the hedge-row out in 
front had been piled so high that in his 
winter rounds he walked safely over 
the top repeatedly. This we could well 
believe, for unmelted remnants of 
great drifts were still in evidence in 

[15] 



The Black Swans 



the early spring. And while I think of 
it: if you have a Rambler rose to 
which you are specially attached, and 
it is growing all over the front of your 
pergola, decking it in beauty every 
June, and you do not want it winter- 
killed and you leave it to some "nut" 
to take care of in the fall, and he does 
it up splendidly in corn-stalks, and 
a cold and cruel winter puts the rab- 
bits hard to it for existence, and the 
"bunnies" eat all the bark off poor 
Dorothy Perkins's stems, and you 
find the rabbit's nest still there in 
April — but no rabbits — and your rose- 
vine is dead as the prophets, and you 
are sore and sad, do not kick anybody 
or anything except yourself for an 
unconscionable idiot for permitting so 
silly a bit of fool preparedness. You do 
not miss your rose until it's dead, and 
even the least of "blessings brighten 
as they take their flight." 

The winter you must understand 
has been spent in town in the surly 
[i6] 



Behind the Backlog 



company of unresponsive radiators. 
You can't get a word or a "rise" of any 
kind out of any one of them. I have 
tried it and know. All you can expect 
is mere heat. True, that is no bad thing 
to have around when, as happened only 
last January, you are snowbound for 
days while deep drifts are being opened 
up to traffic; but you can study a 
radiator just as long as you like and I 
will wager you will receive not one sin- 
gle inspiration from it, will see not one 
picture of any kind, nor hear the sound 
of any voice. That is the fundamen- 
tal difference between dead hot metal 
and living fire upon the hearth. But if 
you are only patient you have always 
this assurance blest — the sun-fires over- 
head will surely come at the appointed 
hour and the outer door be opened. 

Meantime, mysterious forms of the 
life everlasting, underneath the snow 
and ice at Dumbiedykes, are also 
waiting and watching, just as anxiously 
as we ourselves around the steam coils, 

[17] 



The Black Szvans 



for the approach of spring. We left 
them there last fall, these bulbs that 
were to be our hyacinths, and in their 
long duress they did not lack for com- 
pany. Their kin-folk, the tulips and 
the daffodils, were by their side, the 
valley lilies, too, and Iris; and the slum- 
bering subterranean capillaries of the 
lilacs and the oaks. 

Lines 07i the Planting of the Hyacinths 
at Dumbiedykes 

Out of the earth thou earnest, 

To earth return. 

Thine the eternal mystery! 

Out of the darkness cometh light and life. 

Sleep sweetly, therefore, happy hyacinth! 

Soon shall the drifting snows 

Seek out thy resting place 

And hold thee in their close embrace. 

And through the dreary midnight hours 

The glittering stars that glisten brightest 

When the Frost King rides triumphant 

Through the northern skies, 

Shall guard thy rest. 

Fear not. 

Within thyself dwells immortality! 

[i8] 



Behind the Backlog 



In God's own time 

The sunshine and the showers 

And soft caressing southern airs 

Shall come and bid thee rise. 

And clad in garments green 

And bearing in thy sheltering arms 

The fragrant fruitage of thy heart 

Thou shalt come forth in beauty bright 

To greet a world renewed. 

And in thy blossoms fair 

We find and understand 

The truth. 

The odor of the hyacinth is the one 
thing in all this world that never fails 
to take me back at once to another 
country home. Father's, however, 
were always potted or placed in water 
bottles and hidden away somewhere 
in the deep recesses of the cellar for 
their hibernation. Mother's cellar! Its 
shelving laden always with rich stores 
of sweets, jams, jellies, and preserves; 
each Mason jar filled and sealed and 
labeled under her own personal direc- 
tion! Yes, often the whole inviting 
process performed by her own busy 

[19] 



The Black Swans 



well-skilled hands! Their work was 
long since finished, and he who brought 
each spring his hyacinths out of the 
darkness into the light that they might 
bloom for all of us is not here now! 
Red and white, and pink and blue, I 
see them still upon the window sill. 
And their perfume is not lost. 

The nights are always cool in the 
midst of so much encircling verdure 
through the months of May and June, 
and sometimes as late as July when 
''dear Zeus" answers the Athenian 
supplication for rain "down on the 
plowed fields and the plains," the black 
swans of the fireplace seem to also 
hear, and know their services are 
wanted. The truth is the spring fires 
burn here with almost unfailing reg- 
ularity, and Henry has to look well 
to the wood-pile or we lack proper 
supplies. A good faithful fellow, 
Henry! He owns a little place himself 
not far away, and markets with us 
such wood as he can spare, and I am 

[20l 



Behind the Backlog 



not sure that his forestry operations 
are always carried on in strict accor- 
dance with scientific principles. You 
know that the infernally efficient Ger- 
man Government permits in Germany 
only the cutting of an amount of 
wood each year that measures the 
computed equivalent of what Nature 
has that year added by the ordinary 
process of growth and maturity. I am 
not going over to investigate Henry 
too closely either in regard to this 
matter, and the Kaiser, thank God, 
has not yet jurisdiction here, even 
though this is a township bearing the 
now unhappy name of Bremen. Per- 
haps if our loyal Lowden remains 
governor of Illinois long enough he 
may have this blot on the Cook County 
map removed. And speaking of the 
governor and of forestry, that was a 
fine thing he did many years ago on 
his estate at Sinnissippi. On the sand 
hills overlooking the Rock River Valley 
hundreds of seedling pines were set 

[21] 



The Black Swans 



where nothing stood before, and hardy 
conifers are now growing, while he 
governs, into timber that some day 
may be sadly needed. 

Once upon a time the upper Ohio 
River valley was famous for its forests. 
Here and there Indians had opened 
little clearings where squaw-farming 
helped forefend the hours of famine. 
In the wide expansion of the arts of 
agriculture that followed the great 
wave of emigration that poured over 
the Blue Ridge from the Old Dominion 
after the close of the War of the 
Revolution, the Virginia pioneers, 
first in Kentucky and then in southern 
Ohio, laid the axe ruthlessly to a 
million monarchs of these ancient for- 
ests. The soil into which for uncounted 
generations they had sent their roots 
was now wanted for the plow. Huge 
heaps of logs were rolled together and 
put to the torch; great oaks, walnuts, 
hickories and beeches ''in one red 
burial bent." They had no value then 
[22I 



Behind the Backlog 



because of lack of transportation and 
a market. There came a time one day, 
however, in the national life when a 
bridge of ships across the sea had to be 
builded quickly lest a world revert to 
a barbarism worse than that which 
had once burned captives at the stake 
in these same Ohio forest clearings; a 
time when all this slaughtered timber 
would have helped to win the greatest 
battle of the ages! However, nothing 
in nature is ever altogether lost, and 
so it comes to pass in the fullness of 
the years that the dust of trees thus 
wantonly destroyed in days lang syne 
helps to sustain at last the meadows, 
fields and gardens now contributing 
to a Nation's harvest. 

Descended as I am in all lines from 
these log-rolling, rail-splitting Virgin- 
ians who opened up the virgin forests 
of the Appalachian slopes, is it any 
wonder that it has always seemed to 
me that a home that has not the glow- 
ing back-log for its background is no 

[23] 



The Black Swans 



home at all — just a mere place to stay 
and vegetate until you can get settled 
by an open fire, and so get in touch at 
last with all the Universe? 

The woodman who brings not hick- 
ory to me is not my friend. I know it 
is becoming scarce and that it should 
not be burned at all in these belated 
and berated conservation days, but I 
ask for so very little, just enough to 
get the snap and a certain flame I love 
to watch on evenings when it's dark 
and wet and drear out there beyond 
the window-sills! In fact, your true 
fire-worshipper's enjoyment of his fire 
begins with the selection of the proper 
materials for it. This service he should 
always render himself, if he wants 
things as they should be, for there are 
a million different kinds of fires — one 
to fit every conceivable human mood; 
and who knows quite so well as I 
myself what may be on my mind to- 
night, and just what type of fire com- 
panionship I want.^ You can no more 

[24] 



Behind the Backlog 



make a fire for some one else than you 
can successfully pick a wife or hus- 
band for another person. It's chancy 
enough, some say, to pick one for your- 
self, or be picked, as the case may 
be; and the building of the fire, if it 
is to be considered as a fine art — 
which I certainly contend it to be — is 
not the simple act it seems. I speak 
of course from the standpoint of those 
fortunate few who have been blessed 
by Nature with the gift of reading fire- 
light mysteries. 

That oak now flaming so brightly 
on the fire seems trying to tell me 
something. When I turned away a 
while ago it lapsed into absolute in- 
diflPerence, so I give it a good poke and 
listen to its simple story. What did it 
say.^ A lot. Much more no doubt than 
you would care to hear. I had been 
reading Parkman and his thrilling 
tales of how a great new world was 
found by France and lost again. This 
oak was from a tree that once had 

[2Sl 



The Black Swans 



stood upon the top of that range of 
hills to be seen there on our western 
horizon. In the valley beyond flows 
the little river called Des Plaines. 
Farther north a low water shed divides 
its drainage from another stream, once 
known as the south branch of the 
Chicago, that emptied into the big 
lake. The portage was a short one for 
the aborigines and for the explorers 
journeying from Mackinac to the Mis- 
sissippi. My guest from the hills is 
telling that his arboreal ancestors stood 
and watched with wonder LaSalle and 
his intrepid company pass silently 
below between those brushy banks, 
his barges freighted deep with fate for 
France and you and me! His works, 
his deeds, live after him! And the oak 
now falling into ashes on the hearth is 
saying that before it came to us it 
threw its own seed on the soil from 
whence it sprang, and other oaks for 
other fires are growing where it fell. 
And so we learn again. Each "little 
[26] 



Behind the Backlog 



life is rounded by a sleep," but nothing 
worth while ever really dies. 

In the glowing embers there are 
pictures now. The Des Plaines has 
led us southward. The waters of Fox 
River are emptying into the Illinois. 
Starved Rock looms in the distance. 
The mini perish. Tonty passes. Some 
stunted trees are clinging to their 
ancient sand-stone cliffs. Far to the 
west and north beyond the fertile 
prairies where the waving oats and 
rich green fields of tasseled Indian 
corn now tell each year the story of a 
thrifty husbandry, the Sinnissippi Val- 
ley lies in all its beauty. The little 
hamlet, Grand Detour, still dozes by 
the river's edge. And farther on a 
colossal figure from a dominating height 
commands perhaps the fairest land- 
scape in all this teeming west. Black 
Hawk! A grand conception, that great 
monument, the handiwork of Lorado 
Taft! The last great chieftain surveys 
the once happy home of the vanished 

[27l 



The Black Swans 



tribes. Poise, dignity, faith, pathos, 
patience! The red warrior with folded 
arms and vision keen recalls a sceptre 
lost and calmly waits the verdict of 
the centuries. On the very verge of the 
precipice at his feet a blasted cedar 
stands, defying the lightnings of the 
passing years. Tradition has it that 
the eagles nested once within its 
scraggy arms from which all life has 
long since passed. Fit symbol this of 
broken hopes; and what a story could 
be told if any one of its skeleton arms 
were placed upon our fire tonight! 
But it is sacred now and for all time. 
Were the red men as savage as they 
have been painted? Perhaps. We 
know that the Iroquois, the most in- 
telligent, the most capable, the most 
outstanding of all the so-called un- 
civilized races of which there is record 
in the world's history, extended their 
armed sway across the American wil- 
derness as far west as the land of the 
Dakotas. But their worst has been 

[28 1 



Behind the Backlog 



more than surpassed within the past 
four years by a fiend incarnate claim- 
ing partnership with the christian God! 
I stood one day not long ago on 
Black Hawk's high Rock River crag; 
and a few hours later traversed the 
great armed camp at Rockford, where 
forty thousand brave bronzed boys 
were in training for the task of helping 
trail the tiger to his lair beyond the 
Rhine. I saw the Eighty-sixth Divi- 
sion making ready for immediate ser- 
vice overseas. They call themselves 
the "Blackhawks." They have official- 
ly adopted the Indian word, or words, 
that signify the old chief's name in his 
native tongue, as their battle cry. 
And so the spirit of a so-called savage 
past has at last come to be invoked 
in the common struggle in defense of 
elemental human rights and liberties. 



29] 



:ml i 



'^ '^.^m 



^^■m 

-i*^ 







CHAPTER III 

Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

THERE is still a chill in the air 
this day in early June. The Great 
Lake's breath is yet drawn deeply 
from the far-off northern reservoirs, 
and by that same token we shall have 
a goodly fire again tonight. But mean- 
time the sun is warm, and out there 
on the lawn, protected from the wind 
by the shaggy grove that guards us on 
the east, an arm-chair looks inviting. 
It's just an out-of-door sitting room 
anyhow, this little lawn at Dumbie- 
dykes. The hedge-rows all around 
have grown so tall you can't see out 
nor in. So here we are, the world all 
barred away, shut off from all except 
our own. 

[31] 



The Black Swans 



The cat-birds like it too, and we like 
them. They are so trim, so neat, so 
'^ tailor-made," as Billy says; and 
friendly always. They reproduce them- 
selves in two short weeks, and in ten 
days more the mother lights upon a 
twig above the nest where they were 
born and fed and clucking to the tiny 
chicks with fluttering wings she tells 
her wee ones of a great adventure now 
at hand; and one by one they struggle 
out and take their places in the big new 
world. And who shall say that place 
of theirs is unimportant t It may seem 
so to us, but who are we.^ That is 
their question. And from their stand- 
point what is it we do to justify our 
own existence? One thing at least it 
seems the cat-bird, in common with 
the robin, gives us credit for. Wherever 
we build our own nests, the robber 
birds — say the blue- jays or the crows — 
do not come close. Our eaves and 
porches look good therefore to Cock 
Robin, and a cat-bird dearly loves 

[32] 



Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

the cover of a bush that's near your 
door. 

How grateful is that sun ! How blue 
the sky! How green today the ivies 
and the Persian Hlacs that near obscure 
the soft-gray stuccoed walls. The 
outer hedge-rows throw their emerald 
belt about it all. Not even sound 
obtrudes upon seclusion all but ab- 
solute, save the rustling of oak leaves 
over-head. And so I doze and dream. 
My book today has chanced to be 
The Odyssey. In obedience to Jove's 
command the winged Mercury has 
just alighted on Calypso's fabled isle. 
I love Leigh Hunt's translation, and 
wish you would read it with me. 

"And now arriving at the isle, he springs 
Oblique, and landing with subsided wings, 
Walks to the cavern 'mid the tall green rocks, 
Where dwelt the goddess with the lovely locks. 
He paused; and there came on him, as he 

stood, 
A smell of cedar and of citron wood, 
That threw a perfume all about the isle; 
And she within sat spinning all the while, 

[331 



The Black Swans 



And sang a low sweet song that made him 

hark and smile. 
A sylvan nook it was, grown round with trees, 
Poplars, and elms, and odorous cypresses. 
In which all birds of ample wing, the owl 
And hawk, had nests, and broad-tongued 

waterfowl. 
The cave in front was spread with a green 

vine, 
Whose dark round bunches almost burst with 

wine; 
And from four springs, running a sprightly 

race, 
Four fountains clear and crisp refreshed the 

place; 
While all about a meadowy ground was seen. 
Of violets mingling with the parsley green." 

And then I wake. Around about me 
the enchanted island washed by blue 
Aegean waves ! No, it cannot be, for it 
is mint I smell, not cedar nor yet citron 
wood. And those fountains, are they 
really racing through the violets and 
asphodel? It is not so. No Mercury 
appears; only Henry in blue overalls 
and he has just laid the nozzle of the 
garden hose down there among the 

[34] 



Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

pink geraniums, and is replenishing 
the bird-bath yonder underneath our 
best white oak. And he is not using 
a graceful Grecian urn; just a common 
old watering-pot with a broken spout! 
And the goddess herself is not inside. 
That is no whirring spinning wheel you 
seem to hear. It is Kate and the 
vacuum cleaner hard at work. That's 
all. In fact Calypso really spread her 
wings early in the day and flew away 
to town on perfectly good shock- 
absorbers and sound cord tires to get 
a golf skirt altered. The parsley 
though, of which we read, is growing 
there by Mary's kitchen door. Praise 
be to the gods for that much anyhow! 
, We had our fire that night all right, 
and needed it. In the first place Calyp- 
so came home not in the best of humor. 
Even goddesses, you know, are priv- 
ileged to show temper at the very 
throne of high Olympus itself! Field's 
were so busy and so "fussed up" with 
inexperienced war help that she had 

[35] 



The Black Swans 



been compelled to wait an hour or two 
before she could even get a chance to 
try on the blessed skirt, and even then 
it didn't fit! And she did not propose 
to wear the blamed thing anyway. It 
was a fright! So there! And having 
once altered it, the firm refused of 
course to put it back in stock, and 
what's to be done? She has a match 
on tomorrow with Cora or Gertrude — 
I don't remember which — and nothing 
to wear! Can you beat it? I ventured 
to say that goddesses in the old days 
were not specially particular, from all 
pictures, statues and other records 
handed down, as to whether they wore 
a lot of clothes when on the Olympian 
links or not, but this did not help 
much. 

In the second place, had I ordered 
that coal yet for the hot-water heater? 
Naturally I had not. Had I not been 
comfortable out there in the sun-rays 
all afternoon with Homer and the 
bumble bees and big brown butterflies 
[36] 



Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

attracted by the "perfume all about 
the isle"? What did such a thing as 
coal mean to any mere man under 
such circumstances? Not a bit more 
than it did to shrewd, hardworking 
Mclnerney that Sunday when Father 
Dorney made his famous appeal for 
contributions to buy fuel for the 
church. You doubtless all know the 
answer. The good father had ob- 
served that Pat had not dropped any 
coin into the plate when it was passed, 
and after the service was over took 
him to task about it. Whereupon the 
thrifty parishioner rejoined: "Well, 
Father, ye can't fool me with all this 
beggin' fer money to buy coal. Ye 
know blanked well that this church 
is hated by sthame!" And had we not 
good oak and hickory? 

But under the mellowing influences 
of the glow that soon was casting rosy 
beams of light and gladness all around, 
the golf skirt that had failed, and the 
coal that was not ordered, and the 

[37] 



The Black Swans 



cold rain that now beat upon the 
window panes outside, were soon for- 
gotten. And the clock ticked on as if 
in mockery not only of the big, but 
of all the little, griefs and worries of a 
foolish world. 

And presently, looking at the and- 
irons and the fire, I seemed to see a 
portrait of a dear old-fashioned village 
blacksmith, beloved by all who knew 
him, whose shop was once upon a time 
to me a place of a thousand mysteries, 
as well as the unpretentious industrial 
center of an appreciative farming com- 
munity. He stands there as in days of 
yore, one hand resting upon his hip, 
the other working the bellows, a cheery 
smile upon his honest face; big-chested, 
big-hearted, gentle as any child. How 
we all loved to watch him at his work. 
He usually wore a red flannel shirt, 
with sleeves rolled up, and the in- 
evitable leather apron to protect his 
clothing from the sparks. Now he 
draws the white-hot rod or bar of iron 

[38] 



Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

from out the flaming forge; fast and 
hard and true the hammer falls, and 
the ringing of that anvil beneath his 
heavy blows is still as music to my 
ears. The boy who knows not such a 
picture has missed something. 

Vulcan himself could have meant no 
more to the ancients than did this 
wonder-worker of the old-time black- 
smith shop to the simple-hearted 
country folk he served so long, so 
honestly, so faithfully. It wasn't much 
of a place to look at — this busy little 
shop of which I speak — just a one- 
story frame afltair with great wide 
doors, dirt floor; the rafters, walls and 
corners stored with the crude shapes of 
iron from which the dear old smithy 
wrought metallic marvels! It would 
cut but a sorry figure, to be sure, along- 
side a great modern forging plant such 
as that our good friend Ingalls operates 
now by day and night. And I have 
since seen big batteries of Bessemer 
blast and open-hearth furnaces dis- 

[39] 



The Black Swans 



charging their deluges of liquid ore 
under roofs that seemed acres in ex- 
tent, with ingots, blooms and billets, 
rails and beams traveling around great 
mills where men seemed to have little 
to do with anything save to work the 
levers or press electric buttons. And 
yet there was that about the little old 
shop that fascinated boyish fancies 
even more than all the prodigies of 
Schwab or Carnegie. 

There was a wagon-maker's shop 
next door, and when the wood was 
ready for the irons or steel the good 
smith took his turn. There may be 
wagons just as good — or, for all I 
know, infinitely better ones — turned 
out by modern labor-saving works, 
but when those which I recall received 
their coats of vivid green and flaming 
Vermillion paint they were certainly 
the pride of all the village streets and 
country roads over which they rolled. 
And they stood a world of wear and 
tear. 



40 



Half-Hours with Mercury and Vulcan 

All sorts of simple farming imple- 
ments and tools came for repairs, and 
plowshares must be sharpened. And 
sometimes a dozen horses waited to be 
shod. The shoeing of a horse's foot 
interests me deeply even yet. Only 
last August at the H-F Bar I often 
visited the busy little shop where 
Smoke and Blaze and Splash and 
Colonel and all that bronco generation 
came — needless to say very decidedly 
against their own strong wills — to 
get the little plates they needed in 
their summer scrambling on the Big 
Horn trails. But I did not ask the 
privilege of assisting at the ceremony 
there, as I always did at "Uncle 
Harl's." My share in his place was 
switching the flies off three legs of a 
horse while the fourth was in the far- 
rier's apron having a hoof pared proper- 
ly for the setting of the new and still 
hot shoe. This fly-chaser was a de- 
funct horse's tail tacked onto a handle. 
To my mind it was a genuine treasure, 

[41] 



The Black Swans 



and those old farm teams were so 
lovable. They would stand and fairly 
go to sleep while the old horse-tail 
fly-brush was being plied and the 
shoer's work performed. On the ranch, 
on the contrary, it was in some cases a 
free fight between man and beast, in 
which one used a bar of iron on the 
ribs or head of his adversary, and the 
other his heels. Even the expedient of 
tightly roping one foreleg did not sufiice 
in one case I recall. The farrier was 
temporarily foiled by the little moun- 
tain devil deliberately lying flat and 
kicking on the floor. This particular 
shoer had a broken leg as a memento 
of some such former session with a 
cantankerous subject. But of these 
broncos more anon. I should not 
imagine that the managers of accident 
insurance companies would class shoers 
of cow ponies as preferred risks in 
their business. 

I know that our fire set could have 
been made beautifully by hand by 

[42] 



Half-Hours wit h Mercury and Vulcan 

"Uncle Had," and it would have been 
wonderful to watch him bend and 
fashion each particular piece ^ as his 
own fertile fancy might have dictated. 
How I would love to hear that voice 
again; it was so rich and deep, and 
there was no note of anger in all its 
register. I doubt if a kindlier bigger 
heart ever beat in mortal breast. His 
type has passed. Horseshoers we have 
with us yet, but the all-around con- 
structive, clever, clear-brained, keen- 
eyed individual manipulators of hot 
iron and steel at cross-roads country 
towns are, I fancy, in these days rarely 
to be met. 

And now the clock calls "Time!" 
Bed-time 1 And it is right, as usual. 





CHAPTER IV 

Low Tides 

WE have run now Into the early 
summer ''doldrums." The last 
half of July is apparently a period of 
rest and recuperation after the intense 
and continuous activities of the weeks 
immediately preceding. The seeds have 
sprouted and brought forth. The 
shrubbery has borne its blossoms. The 
birds have mostly reared their young 
and many have already left for parts 
unknown. The bluegrass begins its 
mid-summer sleep. The main body of 
the insect army that makes August 
ring with entomological melodies has 
not yet arrived. The mercury flirts 
with eighty-five degrees in the shade 
on the porch which is well protected 

[45] 



The Black Swans 



from the sun by trees and awnings. 
A very busy birdlet still imagines 
that the spring is here and carries 
twigs, and twitters all day long as if it 
were still mid-June. This particular 
wren has been known to be at work 
constructing two or three different 
nests at the same time. Billy declares 
therefore that he must be either a 
Mormon or a bachelor. At intervals 
a robin repeats his brave spring song, 
but somehow he has lost his "pep." 
At sunset the plaintive notes of meadow 
larks are still sometimes heard, and 
purple martens "flit and run" through 
their accustomed evening flights. 

The small grains and the hay crop 
have been harvested. Red clover and 
white are yielding their honey stores 
and the bees are swarming. Evidently 
the parent hives are hot and over- 
crowded. Only yesterday a colony 
from somewhere found and took pos- 
session of the hollow oak, where once 
the flickers lived; the same that for 

[46] 



.ow 



Tides 



one winter housed the ill-fated flying 
squirrels of happy memory. Sweet 
clover and tall weeds line the highways. 
Running out from the city this after- 
noon we passed through long walls of 
green reminding us of English lanes — 
chiefly because it was all so vastly 
different. The road did not wind in 
and out with long graceful curves, and 
the greenery alongside was neither 
hawthorn-hedge nor ivy; just weeds, 
the rank sort that our hot summers 
force in such abundance. Even the 
lightnings, winds and rains that a little 
while ago were playing frequent havoc 
with our wires have abated their fury 
in obedience to what seems to be some 
natural law that ever halts the great 
spring drive at this season of the year. 
The fire upon the hearth no longer 
burns. The old clock only changeth not. 
Time neither waits nor rests. 

The year is in its prime, its middle 
age. Its restless youth is past. During 
those turbulent earlier months many a 

[47] 



The Black Swans 



prospect fair was blasted. Some of our 
finest plants were hopelessly broken 
by the driving storms of May. Limbs 
were wrenched from the maples, and 
torrential rains drowned various birds 
unable to save themselves from the 
fury of the elements. Those trying 
days though now are passed, and, 
supposedly, the fittest have survived 
and inherited the earth. I wonder is 
this always so? We make a lot of 
fuss of this business of trying at any 
cost to keep up with the procession 
in the struggle for place, precedence or 
a mere existence! As if life were a 
matter of years only. May not that 
boy who died so gloriously today in the 
fateful valley of the Marne have lived 
to far more purpose than the seedy 
specimen of humanity that begged 
this morning at the cottage door? And 
yet another query presses. Is that 
straggling stalk of corn, trying in vain 
to make something out of itself in that 
hard clay soil back there along the 

[48] 



.ow 



Tides 



roadside, to be blamed, because it is 
not tall and green and fruitful as its 
neighbor in the well-tilled field the 
other side the fence? The grains 
from which they sprang were equally 
sound last spring and assuredly held 
within themselves like possibilities. 
All we know is that one found con- 
genial conditions, the other not. Had 
that big oak the thunderbolt destroyed 
a better right to live than its neighbor 
that endures.^ 

I have spoken of the odor of the 
hyacinth as invariably recalling child- 
hood days. The whirring of the elec- 
tric fan, which we on occasions set in 
motion to freshen up the air inside at 
this season of the year, with equally 
unfailing certainty carries me instantly 
to a summer spent in Washington, 
D. C. Once upon a time a message 
came over the wire in the month of 
August from the then summer capital 
at Beverley Farms, Massachusetts. 
It was signed by William Howard Taft 

[49] 



The Black Swans 



and requested me to serve as a member 
of a body which he had been au- 
thorized to create under an Act of 
Congress. Not having sought such an 
appointment, and being altogether sat- 
isfied at the time with Hfe as it was at 
Dumbiedykes, I hesitated about ac- 
cepting the service. It happened to 
be work in which I had been for many 
years very deeply interested. More- 
over, my game of golf was just then 
of a brand calculated to drive almost 
any self-respecting person from the 
links. Furthermore a certain United 
States senator with whom I consulted 
concerning the matter intimated that 
if I did not accept the appointment 
the President might make a worse one. 
And so a little later I packed my grip 
and began my indeterminate sentence. 
Now, I like the capital city. Any 
tree-lover must. And Rock Creek 
Park is in a class all by itself, but that 
sea of superheated asphalt, that humid 
atmosphere, and those awful nights 

[50] 



Low Tides 



inside New Willard walls ! Fortunately 
I was not compelled by my official 
duties to remain there but one sum- 
mer. That, however, was quite enough 
to last me a lifetime. And to this 
day, no matter where it may be heard, 
the humming of an electric fan carries 
me forthwith to the hotel rooms in 
which I lived the best part of four 
years while trying to do my bit for 
Uncle Sam. Up around The Highlands 
and at the summit of the Park, or 
even on the Speedway down along the 
Potomac, there was some chance of 
finding the necessary oxygen, but one 
could not ride all night, and so it came 
to pass that the Willard and its fans 
and the blessed bath tub are associated 
now and forevermore in my mind with 
hot weather. 

There was another and a brighter 
side, however, to these Washington 
experiences. Hard and grinding as was 
the work; impossible as it must always 
be to give general satisfaction in the 

[51] 



The Black Swans 



handling of vital questions affecting 
the American tariff, our offices, looking 
out from an upper floor of the south- 
ern facade of the Treasury, directly 
upon the Sherman monumental group, 
commanded a superb view of the White 
Lot, the great shaft that commemo- 
rates the memory of the Father of his 
Country, and the valley of the Poto- 
mac as far down as the Long Bridge 
leading into Alexandria. Beyond that 
the Virginia hills, which I never 
contemplated without visions of Bull 
Run, Fredericksburg, Antietam and 
Appomattox. Even this would soon 
have palled but for the unfailing en- 
couragement, support, courtesy and 
always kindly consideration of the 
President in connection with the task 
he had set. 

After the lapse of all these years it 
cannot now be out of place to say 
that no man ever approached the task 
of revising the tariff laws of the United 
States with higher courage or greater 

[52] 



^ow 



Tides 



honesty of purpose than did President 
Taft, and while his plan was success- 
fully opposed by political adversaries 
and distrustful manufacturers within 
the ranks of his own party during the 
years we were engaged upon it, he has 
lived to see everything for which he 
so valiantly contended at that time 
approved and enacted into organic 
law by Woodrow Wilson and the very 
men in Congress who put to death 
the original Tariff Board of which I 
had the honor to be a member. Per- 
haps then, after all, the weeks and 
months away from my own fireside 
and business affairs, spent first in 
wrestling with Count Bernstorff and 
M. Jusserand over German-American 
and Franco-American trade relations, 
and secondly in grappling with the 
intricacies of "Schedule K" were not 
entirely wasted. Somebody has al- 
ways to do some plowing before some 
one else may reap. Some one has to 
ride ahead and help blaze the legisla- 

[53] 



The Black Swans 



tlve trails that may lead ultimately 
to national progress. 

The subject of our commercial re- 
lations with the world at large is one 
that has always appealed to my imag- 
ination. My personal activities have 
dealt mainly with questions relating 
to the production and marketing of the 
products of the farm rather than those 
of the factory, but there is such an 
intimate and undivorcible relationship 
between the two, and such a vast 
field for the exchange of vital inter- 
national concessions in arranging our 
affairs with other nations, that not 
even the delights of Dumbiedykes 
shall ever bring. my interest in that 
subject entirely to an end. And as 
the close of the great war comes in 
sight, who shall deny the fact that 
the business readjustments between 
the nations, rendered imperative by 
the financial and industrial earthquake 
through which we are passing, shall be 
a matter demanding the thoughtful 

[54] 



Low Tides 



and intelligent consideration of every 
patriotic American. 

A cool breeze is springing up now. 
The electric fan that started me, in 
an unguarded moment, into talking 
"shop" is no longer needed. Let us 
therefore shut it off and bury for the 
present, in its silence, our memories 
of those tropic nights when even the 
cold water ran hot in New Willard 
tubs. 

Low tides come to us all at times I 
fancy. We cannot always be riding 
happily upon the flood that leads to 
joyous fortune. That larkspur blooming 
there so gaily, with its tall blue flower 
stalks rising far above its floral neigh- 
bors, is not always decked out thus. 
It has been comparatively unnoticed 
in the garden until now. It will add 
its beauty to the scene for yet a little 
while, and then is gone. And thus 
with all created things. How cruelly 
short the hour supreme when life 
flows at its highest tide! And yet those 

[55] 



The Black Swans 



long and tedious days or weeks or 
years of unconscious preparation that 
finally lead us up to these summits of 
existence are apparently an essential 
part of the Eternal plan. The Century 
plant in bloom at last no doubt finds in 
fruition long delayed the fond con- 
summation of all its most cherished 
hopes and dreams. And that happy 
dragon fly that is born and lives its 
shining hour and dies! It no doubt 
also calls the world just wonderful! 
At least let's hope he does. 

There come times I suppose to all 
of us when we must seek some Walden 
Pond and woods or just ''blow up." 
Rest is imperative. Dig as we may, 
seek as we like ''the bubble reputa- 
tion" no matter where or how, pursue 
ambition's call; receive, if you are 
fortunate, that worldly crown men 
call success, yet soon or late the jeweled 
blade that led you on must be thrown 
back into the waters of the lake whence 
it had been thrust by hands unseen, 

[56] 



Low Tides 



and shadowy shapes appear to bear 
you to your Isle of Avalon. And so 
we cHng each to his own particular 
Excalibar until the last. 

Speaking for myself, in the course of 
various quests for mental relaxation, 
I have made some few discoveries. I 
know that one of the greatest things 
in the world for me is the open fire at 
Dumbiedykes. Another is that or- 
dinary cares are easily forgotten in any 
unfrequented nook well forward on 
the deck of an ocean liner speeding 
noiselessly through tranquil summer 
seas. A third situation in which right 
perspectives have sometimes been at- 
tained is a mountain height with the 
earth and all the fullness thereof ap- 
parently at one's feet. And if I were 
to add a fourth never-failing source of 
inspiration — and I am not sure but it 
might be first — it would be music, 
preferably Grand Opera, provided only 
it be not of the heavy brand they 
make in Germany. 

[57] 



The Black Swans 



During these dog days I cannot have 
my fire. The sea — thanks to the shame- 
less effort to enforce the Hohenzollern 
brand of civiHzation upon an unwilHng 
world — Is for the present the last place 
towards which one would turn for 
relaxation undisturbed, but I still look 
back with memories filled with pure 
delight to restful hours aboard the old 
Majestic of the White Star fleet on my 
maiden voyage oversea. And other 
near approaches to Nirvana wxre en- 
joyed again when, on another holiday, 
the Azores hove in sight as the fast 
but ill-fated Columbia glided on her 
peaceful way to sunny Italy. She Is 
now, I believe, somewhere on the ocean 
floor In Oriental waters. Yes, and the 
Lusitania too, now rolling In her deep- 
sea grave, once on a time raced east- 
ward by "the Banks" through shifting 
fog-drifts, alternating with glorious 
sun-bursts. In a series of matchless 
moving "marines" that shall hang In 
the galleries of recollection until the 

[58] 



^ow 



Tides 



end of time. We were bound upon 
that voyage for the Scottish Border- 
land, for a certain stately manor-house 
where giant beech-trees rear their ven- 
erable boughs, not far from where 
"Sweet Teviot" pours out its silver 
tide into the Tweed. But that is 
another story. 

The fire-place is for the time being 
impossible; the Seven Seas are for the 
present, as far as ordinary travel is 
concerned, verhoten, and the winged 
violinists of the grass and hedge and 
trees are only just beginning to arrive. 
But there is left the mountains, and 
it has been years since we have been 
among them. Let us now therefore 
seek their solitudes. And while you 
are getting ready, may we gossip for 
a time of mutual friends ? 





"Billy" 




CHAPTER V 
The Case of Kate 

ON the evening of July twenty-six, 
it must have been about nine 
o'clock, I sat reading near an open 
window. The day had been hot and 
sultry, and the moon which had passed 
its "full" had not yet shown. Lyra 
was gleaming brightly overhead with 
Vega flashing steadily its blue-white 
fires. Arcturus glittered in the west. 
Suddenly from somewhere in the 
shadows of the lawn a sound, faint 
and inarticulate, it seemed, yet never- 
theless distinct to one whose ears are 
keenly attuned to the voices of the 
out-of-doors. I listened intently for a 
time for a possible repetition, but the 
almost perfect silence of the summer 
[6il 



The Black Swans 



night was quite unbroken. While I 
had not been positive, yet I would 
have sworn that I had heard in almost 
whispered accents the one woid 
"Kate!" 

The sound that I had thus inter- 
preted had rather startled me, be- 
cause it was a signal that I clearly 
understood; one that had to me a very 
definite meaning if it had really been 
given. In fact, it was to mark a very 
important episode in the season's hap- 
penings. The only question was had 
the word actually been pronounced 
or had my imagination only deceived 
me. This I was inclined to believe 
had been the case, for the tones em- 
ployed had been very weak and seemed 
to come from far away. I reported the 
incident to Billy, and asked her if she 
had heard it, but she had not, so I 
said: 

"Well, at this same hour tomorrow 
night we will know for certain, for if 
I heard that which I am not at all 
[62I 



The Case of Kate 



sure I did hear tonight it will be re- 
peated. Of that we may be absolutely 
sure. If it is not, then we shall know 
that I was only dreaming." 

I knew from past experience that 
there would be no further evidence 
that evening of the presence of the 
only one in the world who each year 
thus heralds his coming, and so I was 
not at all surprised that the only fur- 
ther sound that broke the silence of 
the night in question was a sudden 
piercing scream, followed by a series 
of muffled tremulous notes that came 
from the black cover of the trees on 
neighbor Alexander's place. There 
could be no mistaking that. A pre- 
datory undesirable citizen of the forest 
of whose nocturnal habits and wan- 
derings we do not approve — brer owl — 
had possibly made a kill. Presently 
this was heard again in the farther 
distance. Then all was still. 

At almost precisely the same hour 
on the following night Billy called: 

[63] 



The Black Swans 



"Come quick! I heard it! I am sure 
I did!" 

I knew that if matters were moving, 
as I now fully suspected, some minutes 
were likely to elapse before any further 
progress in the action of the play was 
to be anticipated, so I did not hurry, 
but making the open window at the 
psychological moment I caught in sub- 
dued yet unmistakable staccato: 

"Kate! Kate-kate! Kate!" Then 
silence. 

The voice was the same that I had 
thought I heard twenty-four hours 
previously, only now it was stronger. 
Its exact location could not be deter- 
mined, and I wasted no time trying 
to make out the particular tree or 
clump of bushes whence it had eman- 
ated, for long familiarity had made me 
too wise to expect any further develop- 
ments even on the second appearance 
of this strange visitor from the un- 
known. I could now figure with exact- 
ness. 

[64] 



The Case of Kate 



''Tomorrow night, if there be no 
disturbance of the elements, at this 
same time he will call again. Not only 
that, but a little something will be 
added to his utterance; and what is of 
much greater importance, he will not 
be alone. At least one of his pals or 
kinsmen will be with him." 

And lo, on the third night, promptly 
on the hour: 

"Kate! Kate-kate! Kate-kate! 
Kate-kate!" and then the other word, 
which was as sure to follow as night is 
certain to succeed the day, ''Ka-tee- 
did," with the emphasis upon the last 
syllable. That was all until from an- 
other quarter came a low "Kate! 
Kate-kate! Kate-kate!" from one that 
had just been aroused from his long 
sleep. 

So they were here, sure enough, the 
advance guard of our old friends. They 
were nearly a fortnight ahead of their 
accustomed schedule, and on the next 
night two or three more hatched out 

[6sl 



The Black Swans 



and gave expression, twice repeated, 
to the only word they know when first 
born; while the pioneer, now three 
days old, having finished the cicadlan 
curriculum proceeds to launch the 
strange dispute that Is only ended by 
the final collapse of all who participate 
so strenuously In It. 

"Kate! Kate-kate! Kate-did! Ka- 
tee-dld! Ka-tee-did! Kate-did!" 

The Issue Is now to be squarely 
joined, for from the next tree or hedge 
comes the quick retort: 

''Kate! Kate-kate! Kate-did! Ka- 
tee-dld! Ka-tee-dldn't! Ka-tee- 

dldn't!" 

They are off now In a bunch, and 
from that night until frost stiffens 
their green frames, so that they can no 
longer take a part in the proceedings, 
the dispute goes on with unfailing 
regularity and It Is always held under 
time-honored United States Senate 
rules. The application of cloture In 
this case has yet to come. They 
[661 



The Case of Kate 



recognize no right on the part of any 
member of their body to try to limit 
debate by moving the "previous ques- 
tion." Neither will they consent to 
the fixing in advance upon any hour 
or time for taking a vote on the guilt 
or innocence of the accused. They 
just keep it up as long as they have 
strength enough left in their bodies to 
express their sentiments — which are 
obviously badly mixed — and it is not 
until we come to the death-bed evi- 
dence of the last of the tribe that we 
apparently get a decision; a verdict 
which so far as I have been able to 
make out is invariably against the 
defendant. 

I have only the highest respect for 
those scientists who can devote a life- 
time to studying through a microscope 
the eye of a butterfly or something 
like that, and then write thick volumes 
setting forth, with a devotion worthy 
of any cause, and illustrated by in- 
numerable color plates and careful 

[67] 



The Black Swans 



drawings, the whole wonderful scheme 
disclosed. And all the while they 
might have been very much more un- 
profitably employed. They might, for 
Instance, have been selling to a gullible 
public mining stocks, or oil-lands on 
the slopes of Popocatepetl, or coffee 
plantations where the cocoanuts and 
paroquets and monkeys grow. They 
tell us many marvelous tales about the 
bee and ant and spider that many 
generations of men have accepted with- 
out question. There is no one to dis- 
pute their statements set forth as they 
are with such great wealth of detail. 
Fabres do not live in every generation. 
It is not therefore for any mere lay- 
man or woman to question seriously, 
even for a moment, researches made 
with a patience that can only evoke 
our profoundest admiration. So when 
they tell us that the male does all the 
talking in bugdom, I suppose there 
is nothing to do but to accept the 
statement. True, if we mere humans 
[681 



The Case of Kate 



stop to reason by analogy we might 
be quite inclined to question an asser- 
tion so entirely at variance with our 
own experience. In our hearts, how- 
ever, we can but marvel that an All- 
wise Providence should thus discrim- 
inate as between mankind and our 
obscure brothers of the bush. I am 
perfectly willing to let these teachings 
therefore go unchallenged, because I 
must admit I have no lens powerful 
enough, and have as yet found no day 
or night long enough, to enable me to 
file any demurrer based on actual 
personal investigations in this case of 
Kate. But for this admitted fact, I 
should be inclined to reason thus: 

It is a fair assumption that in such 
a long and acrimonious contention as 
that concerning which we write, the 
female is morally certain to have the 
last word, the closing word, the word 
which finally prevails and is not an- 
swered. The one fact we have upon 
which this verdict in Kate's case is 

[69] 



The Black Swans 



based is just this: The last one leaves 
oif just as the first one began, or rather 
I should say, reverses the proceeding, 
gradually dropping the "didn't," thus 
abandoning the denial and lapsing at 
last into enforced acquiescence. Now 
it is a commonly accepted statement 
that females are much harsher in their 
judgments of one another than males. 
Where one of their own sex has been 
accused of any misconduct they show 
little mercy. They are even sometimes 
accused of being "catty," one with the 
other. There are of course exceptions 
to this as well as to all other rules, but 
in the main they are not naturally 
inclined to be specially charitable to 
one another in cases involving alleged 
violations of the conventionalities. 
Especially is this apt to be the case if 
the one sitting in judgment happens to 
be old enough to concede without 
debate the probable error of the ways 
of those who have perhaps not yet 
altogether settled down. So getting 

[70] 



The Case of Kate 



back to the case of Kate, it seems to me 
foreordained that she is, under these 
circumstances, almost certain to be 
found guilty. And this is what hap- 
pens. 

Weakened by exposure to cold wet 
weather in the fall they one by one 
give up the ghost and creep silently to 
rest. The one with the final "say" 
having now contracted wing-itis is, at 
the end, only able to reiterate, and 
feebly at that, "Ka-tee-did." All op- 
position ceases. And after a pause it 
all ends just as it had begun on July 
twenty-six with a feeble "Kate-kate! 
Kate-did!" and then, last word of all, 
just "Kate!" 

I hold no brief for Kate, but merely 
in behalf of millions of lovers of truth, 
justice and fair play, who know little 
of sex and songs and family jars in 
the insect world, and who can with the 
lights at their command pursue no 
other line of reasoning, I respectfully 
suggest to all naturalists of high and 

[71] 



The Black Swans 



low degree the possibility of error as 
to the male doing all the talking in this 
particular instance. 

We don't know what the charge has 
been. Probably we never shall know. 
We only know that the "dids" win 
out invariably at the finish. That 
Kate, poor Kate, whoever she is, 
whether one of their own number or 
some Catherine of higher degree whose 
fate has proved of perennial interest 
to the tenants of the hedges; that Kate, 
poor Kate, whatever it is she did or 
didn't do, as matters stand, is most 
assuredly condemned. Kate did it. 
At least so the record uncorrected 
runs. 

And now if you have on your riding 
*'togs" together we will take to Big 
Horn trails. 




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^E 



CHAPTER VI 

Smoke of the H-F Bar 

YES, "Smoke." That was his name. 
He was only a cow-pony on a 
western ranch, but he was wise, and, 
unHke some of his kind, quite an 
agreeable companion. In fact, I can 
say in truth we spent many quite happy 
hours together. He was not specially 
communicative, and yet many a time 
when I had dismounted and thrown 
myself upon the ground to rest and 
get in touch with all that is revealed 
from some of the higher Big Horn 
slopes, he would pause now and then 
in his grazing by my side to poke his 
muzzle along the sleeve of my riding 
coat and look at me with big brown 
eyes. Just what it was he said to me 

[73] 



The Black Swans 



I may not tell, for it was strictly 
entre nous. 

You had only to throw your reins 
to the ground and Smoke was hitched 
for the day, and in the course of six 
weeks of intimate companionship I 
discovered that this was specially true 
if I happened — as was often the case — 
to stretch myself at his feet to bask 
with the "rock-chucks" in the warmi 
high mountain sun, and enjoy with 
them and Smoke the eternal snows, 
the towering rocks, the sapphire sky, 
the irrigated valleys far below with 
emerald green alfalfa fields, or ponder 
the inscrutable mysteries of the distant 
Bad Lands. 

One who has known the joys that 
wait upon a frosty morning's ride 
along smooth Appalachian bridle paths 
with a gaited southern mount will balk 
at first when he sees the H-F Bar 
corral and its motley aggregation being 
roped and cinched. All shapes and 
sizes and colors from the speckled 

[74] 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



Remingtonians to the comparatively 
shapely ones that show a cross or two 
of horse! But when you know them 
better and grow familiar with the sort 
of service they perform for inexperi- 
enced hands your hat will come off to 
these same ragged rugged products of 
an iron environment, and you will know 
that Nature rarely makes mistakes. 

On these self-styled "dude" ranches 
of Wyoming a pony goes with each cot 
and the "grub" — all included in the 
price where city folks now sometimes 
go to make first-hand acquaintance 
with the west. At the H-F Bar the 
pony is yours to have and to hold — if 
you can — so long as your vacation 
lasts. You may not like the first one 
you draw, but if it so transpires that 
you do not, you have only to file 
application with Harry, the senior 
wrangler, for a change of venue, and 
perhaps you will get a worse one. Per- 
haps, however, this bronzed and keen- 
eyed veteran who knows the bronco 

[75] 



The Black Swans 



as an open book will let you in right. 
Harry and Ray, his tall and typical 
moving-picture mate, are all right. 
They know their business just as the 
ponies do, and that means that they 
all ''savey" well their own particular 
jobs and multifarious responsibilities. 
You cannot say as much for most of 
the eastern tenderfeet who swarm 
around the saddles every morning. 
Most of them do not know just what 
they do want in the equine line. Men 
with "shot" nerves, men whose idea 
is that heaven lies near where a 
speckled beauty swims below the tip 
of a jointed rod, women who are look- 
ing for lost weight and women who are 
willing to lose it; children, too, the 
boy who buys a hunting knife and 
"chaps" before he has been on the 
ranch an hour, so he can look a cow- 
boy bold, and the "kids" who are to 
have their first lesson here perhaps on 
"Sausage" or some other fat old 
veteran of the band. 

[7^\ 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



Splash got his name, as had Smoke, 
White Man and Blaze from peculiar 
color markings. Splash was Billy's, 
and the only "racker" on the ranch. 
He was black, with a few white 
splotches, and here and there the 
black and white so intermingled as to 
produce a peculiar grizzled mixture. 
He was nimble on his feet, quick as 
a cat and the easiest-gaited pony on 
the ranch. In common with all the 
rest, however, he invariably took the 
first touch of your toe in the stirrup 
as the signal to be off. You are sup- 
posed to swing yourself up into the 
saddle as they fly away. Billy can tell 
you best about this. She made a 
noble effort one fine morning to get 
aboard in time, but Splash was just 
a little bit too quick. But she will 
have to tell of that herself. 

Blaze was a decidedly good mount. 
There is real horse in him. That Is to 
say, he was not of the pure native 
blood. In conformation, size and gen- 

[77] 



The Black Szva^is 



eral character he stood out somewhat 
from the common herd. And he, like 
Splash, was not assigned promiscuous- 
ly. He was one of those face-cards in 
the pack, apparently held up his sleeve 
by Harry, to be dealt only to some one 
who had first demonstrated a capacity 
for really enjoying his good points. 
This chanced to be Lucile. Now Lucile 
had not been just fortunate in the 
original draw. Her first one was too 
slow, and Prince had proved a surly, 
heady brute, always looking for a 
chance to get the bit between his 
teeth and go. White Man, a little the 
worse for wear perhaps, but still with 
much in his favor, was the next candi- 
date, but one day he had the mis- 
fortune to fall flat, so still another was 
requisitioned. The lady had through 
all this clearly established her claim 
to better treatment, and thus it came 
to pass that Blaze was duly awarded 
her, and so far as I know ridden hap- 
pily ever after. 

[78] 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



Wise, did I say? Solomon in all his 
glory or the Lord Chief Justice him- 
self in wig and gown, may be set down 
as "pikers" in comparison with these 
hundred ponies of the H-F Bar. What 
they do not know about life on their 
own stony hills and treacherous trails 
would not be worth printing. And 
they have come to know the "dude" 
and his ways quite as well, and how 
they do delight to "work" him! When 
It comes to wrestling with the hard- 
ships and the dangers of the wild, in 
the hard school of which they were 
born and bred, they act on Instinct 
infallible. There are certain things 
they fear. Their ancestors before them 
contended for their own In a land 
where safety and comfort might often 
be the reward of cunning, vigilance or 
speed. And they are suspicious, or pre- 
tend to be. The language and actions 
of the "dude" they do not understand. 
In fact, they usually pride themselves 
upon not comprehending his meaning. 

[79] 



The Black Swans 



And probably experience has taught 
them that their own way — which they, 
like some of the rest of us, dearly love 
to have — is apt to be the best way, at 
least for themselves. 

To begin with, they are "broken" 
literally, not figuratively, speaking. 
As colts big enough to be bitted, they 
will not surrender their native inborn 
love of liberty, their right to run the 
range without restraint, until con- 
quered by a force they are incapable 
of indefinitely resisting — such as Ray, 
for instance, at the end of that long 
and merciless rope. They are sub- 
jected to the gross indignity of the 
saddle only by the exercise of brute 
force ruthlessly applied. And a game 
fight, too, the best ones make before 
they sue for peace, and in the case of the 
more indomitable spirits among them, 
they accept their bondage with a well 
defined mental reservation. Some of 
them have therefore to be "broken" all 
over again now and then. Ray is quick 
fSol 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



to detect the first signs of insubordina- 
tion in the ranks, and enjoys nothing 
better than bringing a rebellious sub- 
ject helpless to his knees with that rope 
which every member of the devoted 
band knows only too well and fears. 

I have said the ponies are suspicious. 
Some of them evidently know the old 
Greek fable of the Wooden Horse on 
the plains of Troy. They have a 
wholesome dread of people displaying 
an affection which your true bronco be- 
lieves in his wild heart to be but mere 
pretense. This I have seen clearly 
revealed by the expression in the eye of 
a genuine child of the equine wilder- 
ness when some animal-loving indivi- 
dual caressed or petted him. Suspicion 
in every glance! They know better! 
Some evil intent, some plot against 
their comfort, is certainly impending! 
They are glad when the ordeal is over, 
and breathe freely once again. 

They may shy unceremoniously at 
a bit of paper or any little thing seen 
[8i] 



The Black Swans 



along the trail that is not strictly 
speaking a part of the accustomed 
landscape. Nothing of this sort escapes 
the more acute among them. Indians 
cannot read "signs" more accurately. 
All sorts of frightful-looking natural 
objects such as might well throw a 
high-mettled Kentucky gaited saddler 
into fits, are passed by unnoticed. 
They know all that of old, but if any- 
thing lies in their paths that was not 
there the last time they passed that 
way beware! Even a stone out of its 
usual place does not escape them. I 
had quite an argument one day with 
Smoke, reliable as he was, on this 
latter subject, and he had me well 
backed off under the alders by the ford 
before spurs vigorously applied in- 
duced him to admit that it might be 
safe for him to proceed, which he 
finally did with a defiant snort. 

Riding in the open the ponies go 
confidently ahead — Indian file of 
course. They know nothing about 
[82] 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



traveling abreast. The trails they 
know best do not admit of that sort of 
progress even if they knew how, which 
they do not, and the lead pony is the 
scout that scents all danger for the 
party. Those that follow at his heels 
have little concern as to what lies on 
ahead or 'round about. They know 
that if a lion, or a twig bent the wrong 
way, looms up to devour them, the 
head of the line will be the victim, so 
the rest may go to sleep in safety. It 
is when your trail leads you into thick 
high grass or any close-set brushy 
growth that a wise cow pony becomes 
most alert. His ears and eyes are all 
attention now, and he takes no pains 
to conceal the fact that he is not 
enjoying it a little bit. In fact, he 
would rather scale a perpendicular 
granite wall, and at great expenditure 
of effort go well around this hated 
cover with its unknown risks, than 
dare the dangers which he consistently 
insists are lying in wait within. 

[ 83 1 



The Black Swans 



In common with all the rest Smoke 
would of course be called rough gaited 
by eastern riding-masters. Still his 
trot was not bad, and, when in the 
mood, he could out-walk most of the 
company, especially when headed 
home. They all have the corral and 
the hill pasture at the ranch ever in 
their craniums. The return trip is 
therefore apt to develop into a rattling 
race, and when Smoke breaks into that 
gallop it seems to me, as his heavy 
hoofs come down, that every foothill, 
every towering mountain from Cloud 
Peak to Castle Rock, fairly trembles 
beneath the shock. 

Dear old "Smoke!" I can see him 
now! Buck skin with black points, 
trained in all the tricks and turns of the 
cattle "round up," steadfast, sturdy 
and sensible — at least from his own 
eminently practical viewpoint — he did 
the best he could with the handicap he 
carried to make one visit to the H-F 
Bar an experience long to be remem- 

[84] 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



bered. More socially inclined than 
many of his mates, I think that 
towards the last he began to know that 
I at least was not necessarily hostile, 
for he not only did not resent friendly 
advances, but in those late August days 
upon the mountain sides when he and 
I were often all alone up there between 
the earth and sky he sometimes came 
quite close unbidden. And one day at 
"The Chimneys" we found 

Our Lady of the Silences 

[Lines inspired by a remarkable rock formation seen in 
the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, August, 191 7] 

Cast in granite, clad in majesty, 
Changeless, immutable as the Titan hills 
On which thy gaze forever eastward rests, 
Enthroned on high with trackless forests at 

thy feet, 
Dumb witness thou through centuries 
Of all the miracles that mark 
The advent of the darkness and the dawn, 
Steadfast alike through wintry winds and 

fervid suns, 
The secrets of the stars and storms are thine. 
And 'round thy riven rock the lightnings play. 

[85] 



The Black Swans 



No sounds of earth or air or sky- 
On those Olympian heights 
Disturb thy timeless vigil. 
Blind to the passing of the circling years, 
Deaf to the voice of birds or beasts 
That come and go, ye know nor care not 

whence 
Nor whither; 

Yesterday, today, tomorrow; all as one to thee; 
What is thy mystery? 

Far down below thy lofty crag a smiling valley 

lies. 
Here, midst the nodding ferns, 
Where dainty wild flowers blow, 
A swiftly speeding crystal stream 
Nursed by eternal snows, 
Flows through green fields that skirt a trail 
Men say leads on to Paradise. 

Here, on a mossy bank, one golden summer 

day. 
One weak and heavy laden came to rest; 
And by the cooling waters of the limpid brook. 
Pillowed upon the loving lap of dear old 

Mother Earth, 
With face upturned toward the azure vault. 
Thy noble figure, faintly limned at first, 
Burst on his view. 
And slowly taking, form against the blue 

1861 



Smoke of the H-F Bar 



At last stood forth revealed. 

And in the presence of thy dignity supreme, 

And in the story of thy resignation, writ in 

rock. 
Was born a thought: 

"Like unto thee. 

Thou silent priestess of the mountain pass. 

Guarding by night and day the way to higher 

paths. 
My soul is set as stone in adoration adamant; 
Set by some Power whose ways we know not 

nor can stay; 
Set, even as thy graven face is set. 
Towards visions fair as rosy-tinted morn, 
And doomed like thee 

To see the hope that's born anew each day, 
Fade far away each night. 

"Still shall I watch and wait like thee 

Dwelling in solitude immeasurable as thine, 

Faithful and true to my ideal. 

Until the striking of the hour when I shall heed 

The sunbeams and the pale moon-rays 

And clouds that shroud a fading world 

As little as dost thou." 



87 




CHAPTER VII 

Told in the Firelight 

SPEAKING of fires, we had one on 
the rocks for two successive nights 
way up in the higher range that was 
a campfire sure enough. We were on a 
three-day trip to Little Frying Pan 
Lake where the mountain trout are so 
plentiful and friendly that they swim 
between your knees as you stand there 
in your ''waders" begging you to take 
them first instead of casting farther 
out. I knew almost as much about fly- 
casting as Smoke knew of Sanskrit, 
so it was well for me that Lake Fry- 
ing Pan trout were so utterly reck- 
less. As it was I beat the surface of 
the water so effectually in my efforts 
at learning how to throw a fly that 

[89] 



The Black Swans 



I drove fish by the school into Chf- 
ford's basket. He couldn't cast fast 
enough to accommodate the game I 
threshed his way. After landing a 
few by main strength and awkward- 
ness as against mere skill, I suc- 
cumbed to the heat and mosquitoes 
and went ashore, for was Smoke not 
there and Ed, good guide, unequaled 
cook and general manager? And up 
above did not the snow-filled gulches 
beckon.^ I had often seen the white- 
topped peaks, and had half believed 
it possible that it was really snow 
they carried in spite of the torrid mid- 
day temperature at lower levels, but 
I now made up my mind to find out 
for certain on my own account, and 
soon we were on our way. Yes, it 
was snow all right, for we scrambled 
over it, and up above alongside the 
giant boulders of the peak the blue 
forget-me-nots were blooming in what 
seemed up there to be an April sun and 
atmosphere. 

[90] 



Told in the Firelight 



Camp was reached at sun-down. 
The supper a Lucullus feast! A cloud- 
less night; in fact, a night above the 
clouds came on, and, as a full moon 
shed its glory over all, the logs and 
stumps and boughs of pine and spruce 
and fir, piled high upon the rocks, soon 
flashed their flaming message to the 
skies. And by and by the fire burns 
low. The coyotes are barking down 
there where the ponies graze, and a 
story of the West that is no more has 
forced itself upon me. 

The round-up at the Seven Pastures 
and another we had subsequently seen 
had been among our late experiences. 
Old-timers like Burnett and Hess over 
there near Buffalo will tell you these 
are but tame affairs in these degenerate 
days, but still they are not altogether 
wanting even now in interest. The 
various participating outfits have the 
cattle well in hand gathered from the 
four quarters. Some have already 
reached the appointed place, and way 

[91] 



The Black Swans 



off yonder In the north or east or south 
or west a trampHng host of Herefords 
and Shorthorns come a-trooping down 
the hills, a solid mass of beef upon the 
hoof. They are so far away at first 
they seem mere specks upon the hori- 
zon, but as they come nearer and 
nearer you can distinguish forms and 
colors. Everywhere the unmistakable 
badge of the hardy, red-robed, white- 
faced Hereford ! The cows with young- 
est calves come last. Some of the 
babies, weakened by their journey 
from the far-off pastures, sank at once 
when the herd was halted. Pandemo- 
nium reigned. Many a mother had 
been separated from her calf, but the 
bawling of the cows was music to the 
ears of the man who counted a good 
crop ready for the branding. You 
know the rest. 

We sat there in our saddles and 
watched the horned hundreds as they 
passed; and in the long parade I saw 
one poor old cripple with the roan coat 

[92] 



Told in the Firelight 



of the Shorthorn, the white face of the 
Hereford and the great wide-spreading 
up-turned horns of the old-time Texan. 
Obviously she embodied within herself 
the whole story of the western cattle 
trade; the passing of the red men and 
the buffalo, the first great invasion of 
the wilderness by the southern Long- 
horns, the frightful losses suffered in 
the early days and the subsequent 
reoccupation of the ranges under better 
control and management. All this 
and more was now recalled by the 
smouldering embers of our dying camp 
fire in the mountains, and some lines * 
I once had written now came clearly 
back: 

* Publisher's Note. — Seme years ago Mr. Sanders 
prepared at the solicitation of leading western ranchmen 
and cattle breeders a volume of about i,ooo pages which 
he called "The Story of the Herefords." This bit of verse 
was added as an appendix to that work, which is highly 
technical in its character and naturally makes little appeal 
to the general reader not interested in the subject matter. 
Many of the author's friends have asked that "The 
Coming of the Cattle" therefore be printed now in some 
shape where it would be generally available. Hence its 
incorporation in this sketch. 

[93] 



The Black Swans 



The Coming of the Cattle 

Ever as the evening shadows 

Deepen o'er the plains and prairies, 

Ever as the darkness gathers 

'Round the foot-hills and the mountains, 

In the fire-light there are phantoms, 

In the pine-trees mystic murmurs. 

Spirit voices calling ever 

From the land beyond the sun-set. 

There is moon-light on the mesa. 

Stars are shining o'er the sages. 

And the night-wind from the desert 

Bears upon its wings the wailing 

Of the red men in their lodges, 

Of the dwellers in the canons, 

Of the children of the vegas. 

Of the bison on the meadows. 

Of the grizzlies in the gulches. 

Of the wolves upon the barrens; 

And forever in the gloaming 

As the Great Bear watches o'er them 

Can be heard their plaintive story 

Of the peace upon the ranges. 

Of the fatness of the grazing, 

Of the plenty in the valleys, 

Of the shelter in the forest 

In the days before the coming 

Of the pale-face and the cattle. 

[94] 



Told in the Firelight 



Countless moons had passed above them, 
Nature's creatures of the dry-lands, 
And their comrades of the high-lands. 
Generations came and vanished; 
Still there came naught to appal them. 

Feared they not the fangs of winter, 
Nor the flaming breath of summer. 
For the north-wind was their keeper 
And the south a loving mother; 
And the wandering breezes told not. 
And the rippling rivers sang not 
Of the evil days impending. 
But the thunder clouds were hanging 
Heavy o'er the hapless races. 
Moons of plenty shine not always, 
Bluest skies at last are blackened. 
Lightnings hover in the sunshine, 
Longest trails must have an ending. 
And there came the day of waking. 

Signs portentous in the heavens, 
Fires by night and clouds at noon-day, 
Told of trampling hosts advancing. 
From the distant Rio Grande. 

Hoofs were heard along the Brazos, 
Horns were tossing on the Pecos 1 
From the far-off southern pastures. 
From the waters of the Concho, 

[951 



The Black Swans 



From the grassy realms of Texas, 
Day by day in countless numbers 
Pressed the cattle to the conquest. 
Northward, westward, ever northward, 
Toward the sunny plains of Kansas, 
Toward the walls of Colorado. 

Night by night their bed-grounds found them 
Nearer still and always nearer 
To the nameless unknown perils 
Of the Northland they had entered 
On the trails that led not backward. 

Not the pangs of thirst nor hunger. 
Not the northern storm-cloud's warning. 
Not the stampede in the darkness. 
Not the seas of fire that threatened 
On the wind-swept blazing prairies 
Stayed them in their great migration 
As they journeyed ever onward 
Toward the sand hills of Nebraska, 
Toward the Bad Lands of Dakota, 
Northward, westward, ever northward. 

And the Chinook came to cheer them. 
Higher still and ever higher 
Newer pastures bloomed and beckoned. 
Where the Yellowstone was flowing. 
Where the wide Missouri wandered. 
Where Montana's peaks were gleaming, 

[96] 



Told in the Firelight 



Where the Big Horn dreamed of battle, 
Where Wyoming's highest ranges 
Led up to the lofty passes, 
To the parting of the waters. 
Came the cow-men and their cattle, 
Came the bronco and the buster, 
Came the camp-fire and the cabin. 
Came the round-up and the branding. 

Where the silent snowy summits 

Guard the Colorado's sources, 

Where the darkly-frowning forests 

Hide the Rio Grande's fountains, 

Lo, the west wind came a-sighing, 

Came a-telling of the coming 

Of the cattle to the empire 

That belonged to Montezuma 

In the days before the Spaniards. 

Told of hoof-prints of the Longhorn 

And of lowing herds a-basking 

In the sunshine everlasting. 

Where the antelope and bison 

And the cliff-men of the canons 

Had for ages all unbroken 

Roamed and reared their happy children. 

Vainly had the dread Mojave, 
Vainly had the high Sierra 
Stayed the coming of the cattle 
On the trail of Coronado; 

[97] 



The Black Swans 



For they failed not in their daring 
Till beyond the burning desert 
Far beyond the jagged sky-line 
In a flowery land and fruitful 
Billows beating on the sand-dunes, 
Thundering on the rocky headlands, 
Marked the ending of the grazing. 

From their ancient haunts the hunted 
Creatures that the wild had nurtured. 
Driven from their lands and waters, 
Now in sullen stealth retreated 
To their secret rocks of refuge. 
Calling on their sleeping war-gods: 
Prayed that elemental furies 
Might be loosed upon the ranges. 

And the strangers all unconscious 
That the earth would soon be shaking 
With the anger of the heavens 
Went their way in peace and feared not. 

As the eagle from his eyrie 
Hurls himself upon his quarry, 
As the arrow from the cord flies. 
As the lion on his prey springs. 
As a wounded herd bull charging. 
So the wilderness revolted; 
So did Manitou awaken, 
Swift to punish and to chasten. 

[98] 



Told in the Firelight 



Through the Northland arctic demons 
Rode the frozen ice-bound ranges; 
Through the Southland fiery dragons 
Scourged the earth with blazing horrors. 
Then the drifting to the death-traps! 
Hopeless struggling of the helpless! 
Herds a-wreck from drouth and famine! 
Bleaching bones to tell the story! 

As the spear by shield is shattered, 
As the shore turns back the waters, 
As the rock resists the torrent, 
So the wild enforced her mandates, 
Claimed her tribute of the reckless. 
Taught the lesson of the ages. 
Nature brooks not mad defiance! 

But the earth renewed its fruitage. 
Sunbeams dancing on the ranges, 
Waters from the purple mountains, 
Soft airs from the western ocean. 
Called the grasses from their slumbers, 
Clothed again the world with verdure. 
And again the herds were gathered, 
Not with folly in the councils. 
Not with blind chiefs in the saddles. 
Children scorched by fire have wisdom. 

On the trails that led not backward 
Once again the cattle entered; 

[99] 



The Black Swans 



Once again the herds were scattered 
Far and wide across the pastures; 
At their head a pale-faced stranger 
Staunch of limb and lion-hearted, 
From beyond the deep sea waters, 
From the distant shores of England. 
His the heritage of ages 
From the hills of grim Glamorgan; 
His the power that was descended 
Through the Hereford generations, 
From the wearing of the burdens 
Of the yoke of heavy hauling, 
From a life of toil and travail 
In the service of his masters. 

Proud the bearing of this chieftain 
As he armed them for the battle; 
Wrapped them in red robes of courage, 
Bound them by the ties of kindred 
As of tribes by blood united; 
Filled them with his dauntless spirit. 
Taught them how to meet privations. 
Taught them how to face the northers. 
Winter's stress and summer's terrors; 
Fought their fight through many perils, 
Led them bravely through all dangers. 
Grasped dominion of the ranges, 
Held them in secured possession, 
Brought the cattle to their kingdom. 

[ loo] 



Told in the Firelight 



As the leaves fall in October, 

As the stream dies in the quicksands, 

As the snow melts in the sun rays, 

So the children of the open, 

Of the mountain, plain and valley, 

Fled before the rail and rifle, 

Fled before the conquering cattle, 

Farther still and ever farther 

To the bosom of the river 

That is bearing them forever 

Through the land of the Hereafter. 

The fire Is ashes now. Ed has told 
his last bear story and it is growing 
cold. The day is done. Our shoes are 
hid away beyond the reach of prowling 
porcupines. We seek our sleeping bags, 
and say "Good Night." Next day we 
ride away. Back to the little slab-side 
cabin by the creek. 

September now Is near. Vacation 
days are over, and the hour arrives 
when we must say good-bye to Smoke 
and other loved companions of the 
trails. We are leaving on the morrow. 
The evening star has set behind the 
western walls. A curtain dark Is 
[loi] 



The Black Swans 



drawn o'er hill and dale. The last 
long silent hours have come. And all 
night long a voice that calls to me un- 
ceasing through the years is heard; a 
voice that shall be heard so long as 
summer breezes stir green leaves and 
flowing waters gurgle by their willowed 
shores. 




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CHAPTER VIII 

'' Tick-Tock'' Talk 

ON our return the old clock is wig- 
wagging away in its accustomed 
place just as on the day we left. It 
has one virtue not possessed by the 
fire-place; it is always alive and ticking. 
The hearth cheers only when the tem- 
perature outside permits or demands 
its use. At other times it is a purely 
negative blessing, loved and valued 
for faithful service rendered in the past, 
and prized and longingly regarded for 
its potential powers and latent pos- 
sibilities. But the clock will talk to 
you at any time, and those who have 
ears to hear its calm and even-tem- 
pered comment will find it oftentimes 
dispensing very sound philosophy. It 
[103] 



The Black Swans 



seems to have such a serene, contented 
viewpoint, and when you return from 
town or from wanderings far afield in 
quest each of his own particular will 
o' the wisp it invites attention at once 
to the fact that many of the best 
things in life really come to those who 
only ''stand and wait" and bide their 
time. Why race up and down the 
world indeed in frantic search of this 
or that supposed desideratum when 
all you have to do is to choose a cosy 
corner in a cottage near an open win- 
dow where you can see each day and 
night all that is really most beautiful 
in all the world? The true measure of 
all happy hours is peace. 

The clock is not the only thing about 
the place that takes this complacent 
view. There is an old gray cat there 
curled up fast asleep upon a soft 
cushion Billy made for his especial 
benefit. You could not excite that cat 
of ours about anything in this world. 
In fact, he has not even the feline 

[ 104] 



Tick-Tock'' Talk 



fault of staying out late o' nights. 
He is just a model; that's all you can 
say about him. And I use that word 
advisedly, for he was first cast in clay 
or something, then duly decorated, set 
in an oven and baked, and lo! behold 
the best kind of a cat in all this world — 
a life-size china cat! 

I dearly love a good dog, and I have 
no quarrel with those who may be 
fond of cats, but to my mind the 
best cat is like the best Indian. They 
may be all right around old barns and 
corn cribs built before this cement age 
of ours. I suppose they scare some 
rats away, and now and then get one, 
but you can get more effective rat and 
mice exterminators at the druggist's or 
your hardware dealer's that eat no 
meat and consume neither milk nor 
songbirds, so I stand by our china cat. 
As a living-room decoration he fits 
in with the clock, and adds a little 
touch to the picture made by the fire 
at night. 

[105] 



The Black Swans 



Yes, and we have some other pets 
around the cottage. Billy has three 
birds, a parrot, a canary and an un- 
identified wood bird not native to these 
parts. Fortunately Polly does not 
talk. She just sits up on her perch on 
the top of a long stick that Billy has 
stuck into the middle of a basket of 
palms and ferns with a snake plant 
in the center. Here again food con- 
servation and other economic ques- 
tions have had due and, it seems to 
me, most intelligent handling, for the 
parrot is a wooden one and gaily 
painted. 

The canary's cage is a rectangular 
Japanese bamboo creation with arch- 
ing roof. Billy has painted it yellow 
trimmed with black. On its tip-top 
tiny French and British flags are flying. 
Silk tassels, red, yellow, blue and green, 
are pendant from each corner. Inside 
the bird sits in his swinging ring; the 
outfit suspended from the ceiling by a 
string turning lazily from time to 
[106I 



" Tick-Tock " Talk 



time, from side to side. Now that we 
have well resolved that we shall no 
longer patronize distinctively German 
industries, we do not propose to lend 
further aid or comfort to Harz Moun- 
tain nests, and so our canary is china 
too! Think of the seed we save! We 
used to buy it by the bag for a bunch 
of yellow warblers we once possessed in 
town. Of course we always have 
*'Jim" Mann's annual congressional 
donation of packets to help out some, 
but nowadays these have to go to the 
sparrows. 

I once saw a red bird — the kind they 
have in Kansas — wired in for the sup- 
posed gratification of the inmates of a 
certain human habitation. I say in- 
mates, because that is the correct 
term, I believe, to apply to those 
incarcerated persons who are crazy. 
Of course no sane person would think 
of killing thus by inches one of the 
finest of God's feathered creations. 
Our wild-wood bird with black tail, 

[107] 



The Black Swans 



green back and wings, white breast, 
black-and-white speckled neck and red 
crest is usually to be found on the 
table just back of the big, soft-cush- 
ioned davenport standing always in- 
vitingly before the fire-place. I don't 
know just what the ware is called, but 
it is highly glazed and of English 
origin, and the bird mourns not lost 
freedom. The swans of iron complete 
our present list of household pets. 

I am sure the old clock quite ap- 
proves. If you must have birds, in a 
country place especially, buy them at 
any good department store. Leave 
nests alone. Let the oaks and elms 
and maples be your cages. They do 
not crush and break bird health and 
hearts, and my word for it — a china 
cat. 

I think you have now been intro- 
duced to all the members of the house- 
hold — excepting certain pictures, books 
and spirits that are an intimate part 
of life at Dumbiedykes. You see I am 
[io8] 



Tick-Tock " Talk 



very fond of company; I mean the right 
kind of company — congenial com- 
pany — and it is not always with those 
who talk most that we spend our 
happiest hours. The clock talks a lot 
to be sure, but is so quietly unobtru- 
sive about it that it gets not on your 
nerves. It is the only being I know 
that can monopolize a conversation — I 
mean talk all the time, even while you 
yourself are talking — and not be rude 
about it. 

I suppose there isn't really much 
excuse for a fire this evening. The 
doors are open, but the sun is setting 
earlier these days than it did six weeks 
ago. There is more time therefore now 
to use that davenport before paying 
our final respects for the night to the 
clock and the china cat. The air in 
fact is cool, or at least I claim it is. 
You see I seize upon any sort of half- 
way plausible excuse to work that 
Cape Cod lighter. I forgot to say 
before that one of those inventions of 
[109] 



The Black Swans 



the devil, or some ingenious Yankee, 
which has robbed me of a lot of harm- 
less satisfaction is a part of the general 
equipment. I have always known that 
half the fun of building a fire was in 
tearing up the old "Tribunes" and 
"Posts," and fussing with pine kindling 
or some shavings in getting started 
right, but in an evil hour an oil- 
burning "lighter" came to practically 
rob me of those privileges. Now we 
only need a page out of the newspaper 
and just a few small fagots, and the 
fire is blazing there before you have 
had half time enough to get ready to 
enjoy it. I can thrash the man who 
thought of kerosene in such connection. 
It is an insult to my wood, and I ob- 
ject. I prefer to dicker with the saw- 
mill for good slabs to haggling with 
Rockefeller over his petroleum. But 
we have it, and rather than quarrel 
over it we shall use it. 

Prodigal as we have been in this 
country in the use of our natural re- 
[iio] 



Tick-Tock " Talk 



sources, great as has undoubtedly been 
the lavish waste and destruction of our 
native forests, there is still no occasion 
to fear complete denudation of our 
wooded areas if any sort of reasonable 
conservation be practiced. We may 
therefore continue to enjoy our open 
fires complacently. That is one thing 
among many others that we Americans 
have to be thankful for. 

I have been in at least two countries 
where it almost seemed a crime to 
burn wood upon a hearth — Italy and 
parts of Scotland. The fact is that in 
Rome or Naples, if you chance to be 
there in February and call for wood 
for your hotel grate, you will get a 
handful of "punk" that responds to 
your most urgent coaxing only with 
that languor which we usually associate 
in our minds with the Mediterranean 
atmosphere, climate and peoples. In 
Aberdeenshire the patches of wood 
you may see here and there upon the 
granite hills are just "plantations," 

[III] 



The Black Swans 



all of artificial production. Wood 
therefore is precious, as are many 
other things in the North Country — 
a shilling most of all. In the Lothians 
or the Trossachs and on Tweedside 
you will not feel that sense of bleakness 
that impressed me after I crossed 
for the first time the great bridge at 
Dundee en route to Aberdeen to be the 
guest of an ever-hospitable community. 
Up there on the western shores of the 
North Sea (let us no longer say the 
German Ocean) a thrifty, intelligent 
and industrious people have wrought 
more out of little than I have seen 
produced elsewhere in either hemis- 
phere. Along the coast the deep-sea 
fishing is an important industry, but 
it is in the shallow depths of certain 
stony soils drained by the storied 
Don, say at Sittyton or Collynie, that 
you find the most amazing things 
accomplished. If you care to know 
what can be made from just turnips 
(the "neeps" of colloquial Scotch) 

[112] 



'-' Tick-Tock " Talk 



and straw, and perhaps a handful now 
and then of linseed cake, go into 
Aberdeenshire, or Angus or Forfar and 
learn of the simple yet effective pro- 
cesses with which these northern wiz- 
ards work. 

I know that I once lived in ancient 
Northumbria and afterwards in Scot- 
land, just as I am equally sure that I 
passed through one former life some- 
where along the flanks of the Blue 
Ridge Mountains. I never visit either 
that I am not possessed by a sense of 
attachment, a feeling that these scenes 
are most familiar and most intensely 
dear to me. Sometimes I think that 
I belong there still. I imagine that I 
could be happy anywhere within sight 
of Durham Cathedral or in the valley of 
the Tees or near the Grampians, the 
Hills of Lammermoor, or on either 
side of those lofty, rounded, wooded 
heights that separate Kentucky and 
Tennessee from the Old Dominion. 
"The call of the blood," I suppose, this 

[113] 



The Black Swans 



subconscious knowledge would be 
termed. 

I cannot quite make out the par- 
ticular location in any case. That is a 
detail which in the course of genera- 
tions has escaped me, but there are 
certain places in that pastoral paradise 
called Yorkshire that have a strangely 
familiar aspect. There are rich fields 
and meadow^s, rare old trees and ivied 
walls and high-bred flocks and herds 
and well-groomed hunters racing down 
the country-side to the matchless 
music of the pack — ^just as in those 
days of old. I can swear that my 
ancestors on one side the house were 
among the ancient Britons who dwelt 
in Cleveland Vale or perhaps on Der- 
went Water, and were a part of the 
migration of those who were pressed 
out of their fair possessions perhaps in 
Caesar's time far to the North beyond 
the Firth of Forth, taking with them 
that tongue, the remnant of which — 
the old ^' broad Scotch" — is in reality 

[114] 



Tick'Tock'' Talk 



the early English of northeastern Eng- 
land, afterwards so thoroughly cor- 
rupted by Roman and Norman-French 
influences. I will take oath that I 
passed one boyhood on the Scottish 
Border. It must have been somewhere 
between Coldstream and Melrose, 
somewhere between Norham's ruined 
tower and Dryburgh Abbey's crum- 
bling glories, that I tarried through 
many a year in some delectable past. 
Evidently I am now passing through 
some sort of transition stage, the signif- 
icance of which I cannot wholly fathom. 
I know I was not intended to be 
harnessed and driven; I know that I 
resent brick walls, office desks, patent 
leather shoes, frock coats and derby 
hats. And yet I have passed a good 
part of this life within four walls of 
masonry, and am obliged to wear the 
clothes prescribed by a Michigan 
Boulevard tailor. I hate the men's 
wear of this period. I am not sure 
that I would go to kilts. In fact, I 

[115] 



The Black Swans 



know I should not in this climate. 
And apropos of that, and of the right 
to bear arms and bare legs, I once had 
the pleasure and the honor of spending 
a delightful summer day with the late 
Sir George Macpherson Grant at Bal- 
lindalloch Castle way up there in 
Strathspey where the heather and the 
Trojan Ericas were blooming. Prince 
Ito was there also, but you might not 
find him quite as interesting as I did. 
Still he was a bull well worth knowing, 
whose pedigree may be found in that 
Scottish bovine Almanac de Gotha, 
the Aberdeen-Angus herd book. I am 
sure that His Lordship's ''hieland" 
dress was vastly more comfortable 
as we wandered up and down the 
fields that day than were my own long 
regulation "breeks." Freedom of 
movement! Freedom of life ! Up there 
in the northern air and hills! And in- 
side the gray old castle walls we 
climbed the steep and narrow circling 
steps by which the ancient tower of 
[ii6] 



"Tick-Tock'' Talk 



defense has been so many centuries 
ascended; he in garb befitting the 
environment, the history and traditions 
of the place. Over the great entrance 
outside is carved the coat of arms with 
its warning motto: '^ Touch not the 
cat but (with) the glove." Now im- 
agine Sir George or any one else stand- 
ing on those battlements in 1918 
breeches and "bowler" defying mortal 
enemies under the banner of the Grants 
of Ballindalloch! 

Of course we can't all be Highland 
lairds, and cling even yet to our 
ancient blessings and privileges; neither 
can we who are just over — mind you I 
said "just over" — the extended draft 
age don khaki and seek shoulder 
straps. But it seems to me we might 
at least be allowed the Greek or Ro- 
man flowing civic robes with sandles, 
or the long loose smock of the English 
shepherd or Breton peasant. 

I think I must be a more or less 
rebellious subject by nature and in- 

[117] 



The Black Swans 



heritance. The Scotch were always a 
stiff-necked generation. Neither the 
EngHsh kings — nor their own some- 
times — suited them; and the Estab- 
lished Church they would not abide. 
And as for my English forbears in the 
valleys of the Potomac and Rappa- 
hannock, they could not long endure 
the yoke of colonial governors. Any- 
how they followed Daniel Boone into 
the western wild over the Blue Moun- 
tains through dark forests; and had no 
sooner got comfortably settled in the 
Ohio Valley when something else went 
wrong. The trackless prairies called, 
and in a rough-hewn home of logs 
beyond the Mississippi the peace and 
freedom, dear alike to all created 
things, was found. Maybe it is stand- 
ing yet, that roof-tree under which a 
boy once made mud pies and watched 
wild pigeons in flocks of hundreds 
gather for the night in the timber by 
a little stream. Some day I may go 
and see. That cabin was a cow barn 
[118I 



Tick-Tock " Talk 



the last I heard of it — and that was 
long ago — where four-footed folk found 
shelter from the storms; where yellow 
corn and sweet clean prairie hay 
brought solid comfort and content, 
where foaming milk pails stood out- 
side the door and expectant cats looked 
on and waited for a share. 

Speaking of wild pigeons — once num- 
bered by countless thousands, but now 
absolutely extinct on this continent be- 
cause of ruthless slaughter by thought- 
less huntsmen — I once knew a boy who 
thought he loved to shoot and kill all 
sorts of birds, but who lived to regret 
some of his own indefensible acts in that 
line, and one evening not so very long 
ago he sat by the evening fire, and there 
came to him a scene from other days : 

Forefend the Thoughtless Deed or Word 

A May- time of the long ago; 
A boy and dog a-huntingin the hills 
'Midst flowery fields and meadows sweet. 
The notes of happy songbirds 

[119] 



The Black Swans 



Fill the vibrant vernal air 
And from a woodland deep 
A mourning-dove flies forth. 

And if that boy shall live a hundred years, 
And if naught else of early youth he shall 

regret 
Whene'er that plaintive spring-time cooing 

call he hears 
That day in May of long ago shall haunt him 

yet. 

A dove lies fluttering, dying at his feet. 
Strange, wondrous, iridescent colors come and 

go 
Upon the plumage of a dainty, drooping 

breast; 
Pink changing into rose and purples into 

violets! 
Then all is still. 

And when it answered not his touch, 
Too late he knew he cared so much; so much! 

And thus the thoughtless wanton word 

Speeding its cruel shaft 

Straight to its mark beyond recall 

May crush a love that only winged its way to 

bless 
And throw the pall of darkness over all. 

[ 120] 



Tick-Tock " Talk 



And here I am tonight at Dum- 
biedykes musing to as little purpose 
probably as when out there a tired, 
barefooted, sleepy "kid" once mar- 
veled at the whistling whippoorwills 
when evening came. A slowly burning 
log that never saw those scenes has 
brought them back, and why not? 
These trees from which our stores of 
wood are drawn may have also har- 
bored in their time many of those 
self-same birds. It is now some years 
ago, but once I heard far back in the 
Clark farm w^oods near by just after 
dark the old familiar cry, repeated 
long and loud not less than twenty 
times in quick succession, in accor- 
dance with traditional whippoorwillian 
practices. But he did not stay, this 
courier of the air from somewhere, 
sounding his message across the space; 
the one and only call of its kind yet 
heard at Dumbiedykes. 



121 ] 




CHAPTER IX 

An August Night 

THERE may have been bigger, 
brighter moons seen somewhere, 
some time, than the one which rose 
beyond Midlothian Wood the night 
of August twenty-second, but I doubt 
it. The curving roadway and the 
winding walk that led down to the 
bridge were revealed with almost mid- 
day clearness, and underneath the 
oaks along the fringes of the open 
glades elusive lights and shadows 
played. And the night was filled with 
music. 

We expect little of that during the 
dog days from the feathered folk. 
They are mostly in seclusion. In fact, 
the average songbird of this latitude 

[ 123 ] 



The Black Swans 



during these late August days is a 
sorry specimen. This is especially 
true of the robins. They are at this 
period a sad and seedy lot. That 
cocksureness of themselves so much in 
evidence in early May has now quite 
evaporated. The fact is the birds are 
moulting. They seem to know that 
they are altogether unpresentable and 
shun publicity accordingly. You might 
not think there is so much pride among 
them, but the truth seems to be that 
when in this moth-eaten state they 
seek cover just as naturally as some 
of the rest of us would under similar 
conditions. They are neither courting 
mates nor public notoriety, and we 
therefore see little of them, and hear 
less. That yellow-tinted feather lying 
on the grass there was part of a flicker's 
raiment only yesterday, and you can 
pick up a hatful of them if you make a 
business of it. Certain warblers are 
already here en route for Caribbean 
waters, and yesterday a big blue heron 
[ 124] 



An August Night 



came along. I don't know what he 
was doing here nor where he was going. 
Am not sure he knew himself. We 
have but faint trace here of marsh or 
reeds. He was just off his beat a bit, as 
was also that lone Lake Michigan sea- 
gull that shortly afterwards circled 
and squawked above the links. The 
bed of the natural surface drainage 
ditch, called by courtesy a creek, 
would be dry most of the summer but 
for the fact that the club long since 
dammed it where it enters the wood, 
and keeps it pumped full of water 
from a deep bored well. In fact, it is 
damned at some point anew every 
golfing day all summer; for the best 
balls used are ''sinkers," and if that 
gull and heron were as fond of hard- 
coated India rubber as I suppose they 
are of fish and frogs, they might, if 
they but knew, feast famously at al- 
most any point where water meets 
those fascinating fair-ways. But we 
were speaking of Luna, and I do not 

[ I2S 1 



The Black Swans 



care to dwell upon the subject of lost 
golf balls anjrway. Some people like 
to joke on facts. Very well. Let them. 
I prefer to forget some things. 

We had been dining at the clubhouse, 
this night of the cartwheel moon, with 
George. Know George? He is a Con- 
necticut Yankee lad of uncertain age, 
who in his time has worked hard, 
played some, helped a lot of people 
and will be here still, I hope and 
fully expect, golfing, gossiping, dining, 
laughing, and making one or two new 
friends each day, until on Judgment 
Morn they throw him down and force 
an exchange of his "knickers" for a 
robe with wings, and make him play 
with harps, not mid-irons, through 
Elysian Fields. 

It was about nine o'clock when we 
started for the cottage through the 
wood. Some say madness lurks in 
moon-beams. Not being an alienist 
I cannot discuss so technical a psychic 
point. I will assert, however, that the 
[126] 



An August Night 



supernal quality of the lunar flood this 
August night might almost breed ais- 
traction in any mind that has an 
established touch with the Infinite. 
It brings one so very close to the un- 
fathomable. It is a manifestation of 
the working of the same unerring 
Hand that flushed with rose-tints all 
unthinkable that filmy veil of vapor 
overhead the evening of the last new 
moon just after the sun had gone — a 
cloud, such as had not been set before 
I think in any sky, that seemed to 
turn, as Dumbiedykes was neared, 
into fleecy flaming wreaths of fire. 

But after all I like the dark nights 
best. A full moon is such a rank 
monopolist. It dominates all heaven 
and earth. You can see and think of 
little else. You get too much of the 
world and not enough of heaven. The 
day-time is the earth-time. The night- 
time is the sky-time. I know that the 
face of that fair lady shining so bril- 
liantly up there from out the lunar 
[127] 



The Black Swans 



landscape is radiantly beautiful, but 
give me the moonless, cloudless night 
with all its million mysteries. I do 
not want Libra put out of business even 
for a night, because that is the zodi- 
acal sign under which somebody says 
I was born. I did not say when. 
But it was quite long enough ago. I 
am no astrologist, but I have sat many 
times in that big solarium at the South 
Shore Club, and admired that ceiling 
decoration, even though I don't know 
anything about the zodiacal signs. I 
have heard it said that Libra people 
are temperamental; that they enjoy 
intensely and suffer correspondingly; 
that they are mercurial; easily carried 
up to most ecstatic heights and just 
as easily plunged into the blackest 
gulfs. That they are gifted (or cursed 
maybe) with much imagination. That 
they are apt to be idealists. That the 
X-ray power of divining beauty hidden 
to many other eyes is theirs. That 
they love art in every form, whether 
[128] 



An August Night 



it be in the coloring of the petal of a 
flower, the pictures in the clouds or 
mountains, the symphonies of the sea 
or forest. They are apt to try to give 
expression to their inmost thoughts. 
Fond of Nature, they find their great- 
est joy in creating, if they can, some- 
thing that did not exist before. They 
are happiest when those who love the 
same things that they love are sharing 
with them a great play or opera, a 
wonderful painting, a poem, an April 
shower, a field of waving grain, a 
garden of roses or an open fire. 

The star-vault's placid beauty all is 
lost when the moon-queen rides, and 
I like the jeweled Pleiades. I miss 
Antares, too, and all his Scorpion 
crew. And, so I say again, I like dark 
nights; even the starless ones, if fields 
be brown and the roof-tree shakes big 
rain-drops on the shingles overhead. 

As I was saying, we had dined with 
George, and when we started down the 
walk, that night of the record moon, 
[129] 



The Black Swans 



the woods were ringing far and near 
with the endless eerie triUing of the 
August "choir invisible" — the so- 
called snowy crickets of the trees. I 
wish that some one could or would 
coin a word or phrase that would 
convey to the minds of those who may 
not be familiar with the sound some 
adequate conception of the quality 
and character of this strange insect's 
all-night song. Hawthorne calls it 
"audible moonlight." A clever fancy 
that — only the busy band plays on 
just the same each August night, moon 
or no moon. Thoreau has spoken of 
it as "slumbrous breathing." Scudder 
has located the note on the musical 
scale as the fourth F above the middle 
C. They have a day song too that 
differs somewhat from that so per- 
sistently iterated at night; but that is 
not so commonly heard. 

The "Kates" of course grind out 
their own peculiar rasping call as the 
cricket chorus swells from every bosky 

[130] 



An August Night 



bower, but the " dids " and the ''didn'ts" 
seem to tire of their dispute along 
towards two in the morning. I sup- 
pose they get hot boxes by that 
time, and have to stop until through 
the subtle processes of nature enough 
synovial fluid is evolved to enable 
them to resume the friction on the 
ensuing evening. Not so with the 
trillers in the trees, for when at four 
I woke and the moon was turning pale 
in the western mists the air was 
vibrant still with cricketarian piping, 
just as when I fell asleep. The male 
does the work, and apparently just 
winds up some internal spring and 
goes about his nightly business, what- 
ever that may be, and the little wings 
keep going until broad daylight, grind- 
ing out sometimes, they say, as high as 
one hundred notes per minute. 

At four-thirty — sun-time, not con- 
gressional — they still had the air all to 
themselves. A stiff morning breeze 
presently began to blow, and set the 

[131] 



The Black Swans 



oak leaves dancing, but that made no 
difference. The shrill cadence still 
rose and fell. And presently a low and 
regularly measured note emanating 
from some other source was audible. 
At first I could not just make it out, 
but it was soon brought up with a 
sudden little jerk, and then I knew at 
once that it was neither entomological 
nor yet ornithological in its origin. 
It was only Billy over there in her 
nest in the corner of the room softly 
purring. Luna is fading fast by this 
time, for the gray dawn is breaking. 
The crows are cawing, and at four- 
forty Ben Roberts' young White Leg- 
horn rooster takes a hand. He only 
learned to crow last week, and doesn't 
^'follow through" exactly yet, but he 
has found out that he is a sure-enough 
rooster now, and wants all the world to 
know it. 

At last there is obviously a tired 
feeling creeping o'er the cricket col- 
onies. There is evident lack of interest, 

[132] 



An August Night 



or power, after fifty-four thousand 
separate notes have been produced. 
Some have evidently gone to sleep or 
to breakfast, no matter which. A 
few still "carry on." Then there is a 
lapse. A few of them come wearily 
back a Httle later. Then all subside 
and switch to the day-time schedule. 

At five o'clock the usual perform- 
ance at this season of the year upon 
and underneath the awnings at the 
bedroom windows, is put on. You 
would say that a turkey or at least a 
big Buff Cochin hen had somehow 
landed on the cloth outside and slid 
with desperate clawing down the steep 
incline. The struggle for a footing is 
quite strenuous, but soon over, for the 
law of gravitation is still operative, 
and an awning hanging at an angle of 
forty-five degrees is built for skidding 
or tobogganing, not for quiet comfort 
so far as the bird creation is concerned. 
But notwithstanding the fact that 
this vain flapping and scratching is 

[133] 



The Black Swans 



loud enough to be attributed to a 
much larger creature than a yellow- 
hammer, you will presently see that 
it is our old friend some call the 
"flicker" that is going through this 
morning exercise. But he is not doing 
it just to keep his muscular house in 
order. Neither is he doing it for the 
mere fun of the thing. He doesn't 
know the first principles of the sport 
of sliding with Briggs and "Skinnay" 
down a cellar door. He only knows 
that on these cool nights Mr. House- 
fly and a fat and juicy assemblage of 
his sisters, cousins and aunts collect 
around the awnings, or on the wire 
screening just beneath, as affording a 
comfortable lodging place; and the 
bird is hungry, awkward and per- 
sistent. You would think that he 
would scare away at once by his first 
"descensus Averno" all reasonably pru- 
dent flies, but it is not so. The latter 
are not yet thawed out of their noc- 
turnal numbness, and are easy marks. 

[134] 



An August Night 



And so the awning slides are repeated 
perhaps a half-a-dozen times, and 
may be two or three other foragers 
will join in the hunt for frapped flies. 
And now the birds have found that 
when the top of the awning has been 
cleared they can come in underneath 
and work the screens. The French 
windows are thrown back inside the 
room, so the sport is now clearly to be 
seen. This morning after the night 
of the great full moon, with a reference 
to which this discursive narrative be- 
gan, two of the birds alighted squarely 
on the perpendicular surface of the 
wire netting, gripping the mesh with 
their needle-pointed claws, and stood 
there side by side peering curiously 
and cautiously inside. To me they 
are silly-looking and queer-acting 
creatures at best, and their clinging 
to and climbing up a window screen 
is about as clumsy and ridiculous a 
stunt as I have seen in bird-land. 
There, side by side, the long-billed 

[135] 



The Black Swans 



pair, glued to the wire, a very picture 
of discomfort, with piercing eyes, sur- 
vey the room's interior, plainly trying 
to figure out what sort of creatures 
live inside of such a cage. There let 
us leave them. 

All of which is fact, and not an out- 
growth of George's dinner, and if you 
don't believe it ask Billy, for she will 
also tell you true; she saw them too. 





Lilacs and Ivy 




CHAPTER X 

Socks and Flocks 

THE "Knit Club" met here today. 
I do not wonder that there is a 
world shortage of wool. I have seen 
acres of automatic looms weaving 
cloths and fabrics by the mile in times 
of peace in great New England mills. 
In normal periods they are heavy 
buyers in Melbourne, Sydney and 
London of the fine Merino and Cross- 
bred wools of the southern hemisphere. 
Our top-makers and yarn spinners 
have been able to fill but a small 
percentage of their requirements from 
the domestic clip. And with the 
enormous war demands for woolen 
goods added to the civilian consump- 
tion, it is easy to understand why our 

[137] 



The Black Swans 



old friend George Scott — who in ante- 
bellum days played alleged golf at 
the Midlothian Club — as acting gen- 
eral manager for the American Red 
Cross at one dollar per annum, has 
issued a statement from his Washing- 
ton office advising that the yarn supply 
for the busy knitters can scarcely be 
maintained this winter at its past 
maximum. Just how many hanks 
have been wound off long-suffering 
hubby's hands into balls for sock-and- 
sweater-making since the first call 
was made cannot here be stated. I 
know that it took, in many cases, a 
hard-working sheep somewhere a whole 
year to grow eight pounds in the grease, 
and that in the scouring this dwindled 
down to maybe two and a half or three 
pounds of clean fiber, and I know 
that if the countless flocks needed to 
produce these great stores of soft, 
warm yarns were grazing today in our 
own country instead of in the Anti- 
podes our people would be better 

[138] 



Socks and Flocks 



dressed and more comfortable and our 
lands vastly richer for the touch of 
these million golden hoofs upon our 
soil. 

One of the knitters wants to know 
why then this wool has to be imported. 
"Why don't our own farmers grow 
it?" Why be dependent upon Aus- 
tralian "stations" and Argentine 
estancias? The answer in simple lan- 
guage is that as an economic proposi- 
tion America cannot compete suc- 
cessfully in the maintenance of the 
particular type of sheep that bears the 
special grade of wool required in such 
volume in the manufacture of the 
finer fabrics. The sheep that grows 
this dense fine fleece can and does live 
upon the scantiest of herbage on great 
stretches of wild and sterile or even 
desert lands that have little value for 
general agricultural purposes. The 
sheep that is bred in England — land of 
delicious chops — and mainly in the 
United States is of a heavier, fleshier 

[139] 



The Black Swans 



sort, grown primarily for his meat, 
the wool being a by-product only, and 
as a rule a longer and coarser staple 
than the Merinos of Australasia. Not- 
withstanding the fact that the long 
and so-called middle-wools find a good 
market in the woolen trade, and not- 
withstanding the high prices of lamb 
and mutton produced by these dual- 
purpose British and American sheep, 
still our farmers do not now, and for 
a long time to come probably will not 
as a rule, engage in their production. 
Why? 

A knit club can ask more questions 
In a minute than can be answered in a 
day. There are several reasons given 
by our farmers in reply to such queries. 
For one, the curse of cur dogs. Any 
worthless canine vagabond, of which 
there are tens of thousands in the rural 
districts, can and may slit the throats 
and worry to their death in one night 
what it has taken some hard-working 
farmer-shepherd months or years to 

[ 140 ] 



Socks and Flocks 



produce. State laws are being passed 
as fast as public sentiment will sustain 
them, designed to abate this ever- 
present threat to successful flock-keep- 
ing. But there are so many fool people 
who are wedded to their curs that it is 
difficult to get effective legislation. 
Fine, well-bred Collies, the old English 
sheep dogs, and their cousins of France 
are aids rather than enemies in sheep- 
raising, but in this country, and par- 
ticularly in the middle West and South, 
these useful varieties are as yet in a 
woeful minority. 

Again, flock husbandry in the case 
of the mutton breeds is not the simple 
pursuit it may seem to the uninitiated. 
Such beautiful animals as the South- 
downs, Shropshires, Oxfords, Hamp- 
shires. Cheviots, Dorsets, Lincolns, 
Cotswolds, Leicesters and kindred 
sorts are highly artificial products. 
Neglected, they will therefore deteri- 
orate rapidly. They demand constant 
care, thought and protection. No 

[141] 



The Black Swans 



animal is more helpless. None needs 
closer human attention. And so it 
happens that many American farmers, 
especially those unskilled in the shep- 
herd's art, often meet with loss and 
disappointment. "I have no luck 
with sheep" is a common expression; 
meaning, as a rule, that lack of good 
fortune commonly signifies lack of 
foresight, lack of knowledge, lack of 
devotion to the real needs of the flock. 
A pig can be turned out to rustle for 
himself. "Root, hog, or die" is the 
phrase that reflects that proposition. 
And usually Mr. Porker^ whether of 
high or low degree, whether razor- 
back, Duroc, Poland, Chester, 
"Hamp" or Berkshire, will root his 
own way successfully, if necessity com- 
pels. Not so the daintier fabricators 
of the snowy fleece. The delicious 
roast brown "leg" that you had at 
dinner last night or the tender chop 
with the light bone you enjoyed this 
morning did not come from a raga- 

[ 142] 



Socks and Flocks 



muffin flock. Toothsome "crowns" 
or "racks" and rich, thick, easy- 
cutting saddles or loins of mutton do 
not grow on goats or starving sheep. 

Good mother's milk must flow in 
plenty before the epicure may call 
for "baby lamb." Look at a Dorset 
matron's generous stores, or contem- 
plate the broad acres of good green 
rape or cabbages or roots and the 
bags of cake, and even "sweets," used 
in the ration where prime product is 
in the making, and you will realize 
the labor and expense that lies behind 
the butcher's block and complain no 
more of cost. 

I don't suppose any of you knitters 
have been so wildly excited over this 
prosy talk that you have dropped any 
stitches. You have knit one, slipped 
one, purled and narrowed on In the 
same good old way, and how the socks 
have grown! 

Did you ever eat good mutton off 
the steaming copper-covered cart at 

[ 143 ] 



The Black Swans 



Simpson's in the Strand? Did you 
ever feast on a real "finished" leg in 
a Scottish border home — say like John 
Clay once kept near Kelso? Did any 
of you sit at our own table that time 
friend Ogilvie sent us a loin and leg 
from one of a lot of wonderful lambs 
produced at the Wisconsin Agricultural 
College farm at Madison? No? Well, 
Mary knows how to brown a fancy 
cut of lamb to a nicety; and if the 
American people at large could once 
have a chance at lamb and mutton 
such as the English are familiar with, 
we too would soon become a lamb-and- 
mutton eating nation, which now we 
are not — mainly because we have not 
had a chance at the real thing. 

While on this subject, and while you, 
dear knitters, are proceeding with your 
work of mercy, and apropos of lambs, I 
once interviewed the Italian Minister 
of Agriculture in Rome on the general 
subject of flock-keeping in the land of 
the olive, the ilex and the vine. I had 

[144] 



Socks and Flocks 



a guide or courier while visiting in 
that country, and used him as an 
interpreter in the interview of which I 
speak. I had noticed occasional flocks 
out on the Campagna and over towards 
the Alban Hills, and thought to learn 
something of methods there in vogue. 
Among other queries propounded to 
the minister I asked as to how the 
surplus of the flocks, the annual in- 
crease, was disposed of. A reply was 
quickly given in Italian, but Raphael 
was obviously embarrassed and at a 
loss to know how to translate. His 
English was all right for ordinary 
tourist purposes. In art galleries or 
amidst the ruins of the Forum or 
Pompeii he was quite at home. But a 
little matter of distinguishing between 
the ovine male and female brought 
about in this case a somewhat amusing 
denoument. He grinned and stam- 
mered as he turned to give me the 
reply; finally blurting out laughingly, 
knowing that he was ''in bad" from 

[145] 



The Black Swans 



an English standpoint: "The Meeni- 
stair he say — he say — he say — they 
sell the boys and keep the girls." 

A knitter says something about 
blankets — cotton ones — and this re- 
calls a well-guarded remark once made 
on a Southern Railway Pullman by a 
certain New York City girl in reply to 
a query put by her companion. It 
was their first trip to Dixieland, and 
many of the sights and scenes pos- 
sessed for the young ladies all the 
elements of genuine novelty. Passing 
a field in which long rows of little 
brown bushes bore small white balls 
just ready for the pickers, one asked 
the other, "What is that growing 
there .f*" And after a moment's study 
came the safety-first reply: "It is 
either wool or cotton, I am not just 
sure which." And the answer seemed 
to satisfy; and some very intelligent 
people have trouble of the same sort in 
our drygoods stores when examining 
certain modern fabrics. 
[146] 



Socks and Flocks 



Billy is "pig knitting" at the mo- 
ment. That is what the other "girls" 
call it. She has knit herself to a 
frazzle on socks. They were fearful 
and wonderful at first. In fact, the 
original pair came out so huge they 
were hung on the mantle-piece last 
Christmas, and when Santa came down 
the chimney that night he fled dis- 
mayed. At least he left nothing in 
them. There was not enough in his 
pack to make a show. Later on, how- 
ever, she had better luck, and I am 
ready to maintain that few fancier or 
better knitted socks are now finding 
their way to France than those from 
Billy's busy needles. But she is now 
making me a sweater, and when you 
make things for any one these days 
not in, over or behind the trenches you 
are classed with the Chester Whites, as 
a very selfish individual. 

There is not nearly so much "pig 
knitting" going on these days in any 
line of human activity in this country 

[147] 



The Black Swans 



as could be seen on every hand a few 
years since. We are living a little more 
now for others, and not quite so much 
for our own selves. I know a marsh 
not far away were snow-white lilies 
have found their way to the surface 
from forbidding murky depths. There 
is good of some kind, it is said, in 
everything, even war; only sometimes, 
try as we may, we have real trouble 
finding it. 





CHAPTER XI 

The Pig in a Poke 

BLUE ISLAND! Sounds Inviting, 
doesn't It? Makes you think of 
some sequestered spot were limpid 
waters lap a pebbly shore and ferns 
and wild flowers blow. Don't let your 
Imagination play you any such tricks, 
however, In this case. Blue Island Is 
our nearest post and market town, and 
has no grottoes — that I know about. 
I don't think that even the oldest 
Inhabitant could tell you whence, or 
how, or why the town came by Its 
name. A young lady living In a distant 
state with whom we had correspon- 
dence, but who knew nothing of the 
town's location or surroundings, was 
invited once upon a time to visit 

[ H9 ] 



The Black Swans 



Dumbiedykes. She had addressed her 
letters as usual "Care of the Midlothian 
Country Club, Blue Island, 111." Now 
she knew that there was a big lake 
near Chicago, and doubtless had visions 
of being met by a motor boat or yacht 
or being taken aboard a steamer ply- 
ing between the city and her destina- 
tion. Imagine her surprise, therefore, 
to find that we were not on an island 
in Lake Michigan at all, and that 
Blue Island was neither blue nor sur- 
rounded by water. Aside from those 
two facts she found no fault with the 
choice of name. And speaking of that 
I am reminded of the case of Atlas. 

Down in Pike County, Illinois, in 
the hills flanking the great wide Mis- 
sissippi River bottoms there are, or 
were some years ago, the remnants 
of a hamlet that rejoiced in the earth- 
supporting name of Atlas. It consisted 
mainly at the time I first passed 
through it of a tumble-down black- 
smith shop with the inevitable flotsam 

[150] 



The Pig in a Poke 



and jetsam always cast up around 
such places by a farming community. 
Ramshackle buggies, old wagon wheels 
and parts of plows or harvesters rusting 
in the weeds; just a "shack" or two — 
all that was left to tell the tale of 
anticipated greatness unfulfilled. It 
seems that Atlas is, or was, one of the 
oldest towns In central western Illinois, 
and its story is so similar to that of a 
thousand others in the Middle West 
that a little anecdote of its founding 
will perhaps appeal to those who may 
know of like instances of buried hopes. 
I know that the town in Iowa near 
which I happened to be born shared 
the same fate as Atlas. Indeed its 
name was long since dropped out of 
the official Postoffice Directory. But 
we speak now of Atlas. Its location 
had been decided upon by the pioneer 
land Investors of the early days when 
emigration was streaming over the 
flowery prairies of Illinois, with the 
Mississippi or beyond as the objec- 

[iSi] 



The Black Swans 



tive. The site selected for "the future 
great" commanded a wide view of 
magnificent sweeps of black alluvial 
soil, and on the uplands the bluegrass 
that promised rich for pastoral hus- 
bandry ran riot in the hills. It looked 
good. It was good. There were no 
settlements with any particularly 
promising prospects for leagues and 
leagues in any direction. A name to fit 
its manifest destiny was chosen, sur- 
veys were made, the first buildings 
erected and in fancy its fond founders 
saw in its embryonic state the coming 
metropolis of an empire rich beyond all 
dreams. The empire arrived in due 
course all right, but not so the hopes of 
Atlas. 

One day word came to the village 
fathers that some hare-brained set- 
tlers a little farther up the river had 
staked out another town, and it was 
to be known as Quincy. While this 
created no particular flutter in the 
expectant streets of Atlas, a meeting 

[152] 



The Pig in a Poke 



of the bewhiskered candidates for fu- 
ture aldermanic honors was neverthe- 
less held that night in the corner gro- 
cery to discuss the matter; and over 
the "navy plug" the relative prospects 
of the two communities came up for 
argument and adjudication. Those 
few faint-hearted ones who manifested 
any doubt as to the assured supremacy 
of Atlas were soon silenced, and before 
the court had adjourned it had been 
unanimously determined, once for all, 
that "Quincy never could amount to 
a damn anyhow, because it was too 
near Atlas!" Alas, poor Atlas! you 
know what happened to her; or rather 
you know what happened at Quincy, 
where one of the West's leading rail- 
way systems built a great steel bridge 
and shops and made a thriving city, 
while Atlas withered and decayed until 
finally one day a strong wind blew 
it off the map. One of a thousand 
similar victims of pioneer railway en- 
gineering. 

[153] 



The Black Swans 



But we are forgetting Blue Island 
in our contemplation of Pike County's 
tragedy. An island used to be defined 
in my old school geography as a body 
of land entirely surrounded by water. 
The only water in or about Blue Island 
is that which flows through big iron 
mains beneath the pavements, and 
along the bed of a creek called the 
Little Calumet, soon to be utilized as 
a part of a big drainage ditch. While 
near the great city it is not the con- 
ventional suburb at all. On the con- 
trary, it has a past of its own; an 
existence and individuality of its own 
and certain institutions of its own to 
which its inhabitants and those of the 
country tributary to it cling with the 
traditional tenacity and conservatism 
of people of their race — old country- 
men mainly of German peasant deriva- 
tion. For instance, at stated intervals, 
by and with the consent and co-opera- 
tion of the town authorities, a genuine 
old country street fair is held, upon 

[154] 



The Pig in a Poke 



which occasion the south end of the 
main thoroughfare presents a scene 
with which few of the present gen- 
eration of Americans have any famil- 
iarity. 

"Fair" day is a real gala day in this 
community. From early morn till 
dewy eve the trafficking and gossiping 
and beer-getrinking goes on, and in the 
meantime a considerable business — 
made up largely of the buying and 
selling of everything you can imagine 
in the line of farm products from 
goose eggs to spavined, string-halt 
horses — is transacted. Itinerant ven- 
dors of peanuts, ^^op" and pink 
lemonade establish themselves just 
around the corner at the crossings 
nearest the heart of the day's doings. 
The farm folk straggle into town, some 
of them the night before, and all the 
rest at early dawn, and you know when 
you see the live stock put in offer that 
you are not dealing with readers or 
students of The Breeder^ s Gazette, 

[155] 



The Black Swans 



Horse trading is the big feature of 
the fair. Somewhere, some place — per- 
haps behind the Kaiser's front Hnes — 
it might be possible to collect a more 
picturesque lot of lame, blind, crippled, 
swollen-legged crow-baits than are as- 
sembled from heaven knows where on 
these Blue Island market days. I 
fancy they do not all come from the 
farms of Bremen township. In fact, it 
is not impossible that the Hebrew 
dealers and the peddlers and the 
"junkers" generally in the city send 
out, perhaps under cover of darkness, 
some of their own most striking speci- 
mens in the hope of unloading on 
somebody at a profit. Gypsies, too, 
sometimes have a hand in this raffle 
of equine derelicts. So it is a case of 
diamond cut diamond, a lottery in 
which the participants apparently en- 
joy taking all the chances that attach 
to swapping and trading in such trash. 

While the men-folk are wrangling 
among themselves over the twenty- 

[156] 



The Pig in a Poke 



five dollar horses, the women have 
not been idle. In the old days they 
appeared in wooden shoes. They prac- 
tically monopolize the trading in cows, 
sheep, pigs, geese, ducks and chickens. 
These are not usually in large sup- 
ply. In the case of cows, sheep and 
pigs, single specimens commonly form 
the subject of the bartering. Sheep 
are seen but seldom. There are too 
many cur dogs in the community to 
make it safe or profitable for any 
one except a butcher to buy one. 
The class of milch cows offered would 
not appeal specially to experienced 
dairymen. They are of all grades and 
crosses from just plain knot-heads to 
an occasional poor relation of the 
Hereford. 

I have often heard the expression 
"buying a pig in a poke," but I never 
understood it exactly until the other 
morning when driving through the 
fair I saw an animated gunny-sack 
rooting its uncertain way on the side- 

[157] 



The Black Swans 



walk near the curb. The pig was not 
able naturally to make much headway 
in any particular direction. That of 
course was the object of this particular 
form of captivity, and presently the 
old lady that had the deal in hand 
effected a sale, after first giving the 
prospective buyer — another thrifty- 
looking hausfrau — a peek inside the 
bag. Passengers on the suburban trains 
making the Blue Island stop are often 
surprised as the cars speed cityward to 
hear the squealing of little pigs or the 
quacking of ducks emanating from 
somewhere within the recesses of bas- 
kets belonging to undisturbed females 
who have attended the fair. And if 
you chance to be driving out Western 
Avenue from Chicago at sundown you 
will see a long string of battered, 
bandaged horses straggling painfully 
onward to their respective destinies, 
and in and around Blue Island the 
cows with doubtful udders are being 
led to village pasture lots 

[158] 



The Pig in a Poke 



The fair is over. Blue Island bars 
are somewhat richer for its coming, 
and a lot of people have got rid of 
things they did not want or need, and 
others are in possession of that which 
they thought they wanted or needed 
or could turn over at a profit, and no 
middlemen have come between. Such 
is the only rival the Union Stock 
Yards or South Water Street has in 
Cook County so far as I have seen. 
I wonder when Mr. McAdoo may wish 
to take it over. 

A bit of the old world transplanted 
to the new, a bit of the past engrafted 
on the present, this quaint recrudes- 
cence of ancient commerce on the 
Little Calumet. Probably it will dis- 
appear shortly. Soon also will the 
little stream near by find its accus- 
tomed course reversed, and Lake 
Michigan's waters pouring westward 
through its bed between great walls of 
stone. 



159 




CHAPTER XII 

A Pumpkin and a Prince 

WHILE on the subject of fairs 
I am wondering if, after all, the 
great exhibitions now annually staged 
by the leading farming states, repre- 
senting large investments for the proper 
equipment of an up-to-date agricultural 
exposition, have so very much on the 
old state fairs I used to know. Of 
course they have. To deny that would 
be to assert that we may not be mak- 
ing progress, and far be it from me to 
advance any such heretical suggestion. 
It has fallen to my lot to acquire 
familiarity with various important 
state, national and international pres- 
entations of the achievements of those 
who till the soil and tend our priceless 
[i6i] 



The Black Swans 



flocks and herds. It was indeed a 
far-cry from the Httle county fair of 
long ago, when as a boy I helped 
collect for it our best productions of 
garden, orchard, pasture and paddock, 
to the World's Columbian Exposition. 
It was a long leap from my first Iowa 
State Fair at Cedar Rapids to the 
imposing demonstrations of the Ex- 
position Universelle de Paris of 1900. 
There was some contrast between the 
first Fat Stock Show I reported on the 
spot where the Chicago Art Institute 
now stands and the Royal Agricultural 
Shows of England I have since at- 
tended. But, after all, the difference 
is one of degree only. The funda- 
mentals are the same, yesterday, to- 
day, tomorrow and forever. It is only 
the setting that is different. The aims, 
the objects, the purposes, the inspira- 
tions have not varied. Then, as now, 
it was the setting up of standards by 
which the year's attainments in the 
primal arts of peace might be truly 
[162I 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 



measured and compared; the treading 
of the rich fruitage of the vines, the 
celebration of the gathering of the 
sheaves — a custom handed down in va- 
rious forms through all the generations; 
and one that shall not be lost so long as 
men shall sow and toil and reap. 

My earliest personal experience as 
an exhibitor was with a pumpkin. 
Then as now in some localities it was 
customary to plant the seeds of this 
humble but vigorous and prolific vine 
in the cornfields, and one year as the 
corn was approaching its maturity one 
of the hundreds of pumpkins hidden 
away underneath the rustling blades 
gave promise of attaining prodigious 
size. Day by day I watched its steady 
progress. It looked a prizewinner sure 
enough, and I claimed the privilege of 
entering it in the coming county com- 
petition. The big Percheron horses 
and pigs — the latter as good as I have 
ever seen since — were being prepared 
for the same great event, but my hopes 

1 163] 



The Black Swans 



were for the time being wholly centered 
in that blessed *' whopper" out there in 
the cornfield. I was so afraid that 
something would happen to it that 
I could scarcely sleep o' nights. Some- 
body or something, I was sure, might 
break the fragile stem upon which my 
visions of winning that dollar offered 
for the best of its kind on exhibition 
all depended. Early and late I noted 
with ever increasing wonder and satis- 
faction the extraordinary belt line of 
that one great pumpkin of its day and 
generation. Nothing like it had ever 
developed before within the range of 
my very limited observation, and I had 
a lot of trouble trying to make up my 
mind as to the particular use to which 
I should put that dollar. 

There were two red letter occasions 
each year when I never, never had 
half enough small change available. 
One was Christmas-time; the other 
the , Fourth of July — saying nothing 
about circus day. Sometimes I had 
[164] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 

managed to accumulate for those rare 
events as much as a dollar and a 
quarter, but a dollar and a quarter 
doesn't go real far when you are in a 
toy shop every day for two or three 
weeks before Christmas with the win- 
dows and show cases overflowing with 
marvelous gaily painted tin soldiers 
and jumping jacks and monkeys that 
turned wonderful somersaults over the 
top of a stick! As for the glorious 
"Fourth," fire crackers cost fifteen 
cents a bunch and torpedoes ten cents 
a bag, and if you commenced when the 
other "fellers" did in the morning and 
kept it up until near noon you needed 
a lot more than I was ever able to 
purchase. How I envied those pluto- 
cratic playmates who were able to 
enjoy the tremendous thrill that at- 
tended the firing of a whole bunch of 
the little red "crackers" all at once! 
Then lemonade, peanuts and soda 
water added grievously to these early 
financial difficulties, especially on those 

[165] 



The Black Swans 



halcyon days when after weeks of 
anticipation we trailed the band wagon 
of the circus in its triumphal tour of 
the village streets. I usually got inside 
the tent, and on one memorable occa- 
sion had a little change left to buy a 
ticket for the "special concert to be 
given immediately after the conclusion 
of the performance in the ring." Yes; 
and by some special Providence there 
was ten cents still remaining after 
lavishing a quarter on the concert 
ticket, for which I presently found im- 
portant use. The clown that day sang 
a song entitled ''Pulling Hard Against 
the Stream" that for some reason or 
other made quite a hit in the sleepy old 
town. We boys as a matter of course 
were arranging for the usual attempt 
at holding a show of our own shortly 
after the circus left, while the excite- 
ment and enthusiasm were still in 
possession of our souls. We nearly 
broke our necks of course trying to 
ride a horse bareback standing up 
[i66] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 

and testing out various acrobatic 
stunts; and thinking that we should 
sing something just as "them reg'lar 
show actors" did, I had spent that 
last ten cents before the show left 
town for a copy of the clown's own 
song book. For some reason or other — 
probably because I couldn't walk on 
my hands or successfully negotiate a 
big tight-rope — I was picked to sing a 
song. So I promptly memorized the 
one that had drawn the most applause 
at the real circus. That's how I happen 
to remember parts of it even now. The 
music was, I suppose, an utter abomina- 
tion and the lines pure doggerel of the 
cheapest sort. But it was apparently 
an appeal to one's better nature, each 
verse bringing up at the end with a 
long-drawn-out " S — o th — e — n!" lead- 
ing into the chorus : 

"Do your best for one another 
Making life a pleasant dream; 
Help a worn and weary brother 
Pulling hard against the stream." 

J 167] 



The Black Swans 



Now I cannot say what there was 
in this that seemed to strike a respon- 
sive chord in the breasts of that par- 
ticular community, unless it was that 
nobody out there in those days ever 
seemed to have much money, and being 
thirty miles from any railroad, only 
the worst and cheapest circuses ever 
had the courage to invade it, and I 
suppose that for these or other equally 
cogent reasons every boy living there 
knew in his own heart that he was the 
particular "brother" alluded to in the 
clown's plaintive ditty. I know that I 
for one was beginning to rebel against 
hoeing potatoes and milking cows in 
red-hot weather, and envying those 
favored of the gods whose only duty 
was to take care of elephants and tear 
down and put up tents and seats and 
travel all night to the next town and 
when the show "busted" get no pay. 

But what about that pumpkin.? 
Well, the corn was cut one day and 
there lay my prize pumpkin of stu- 
[i68] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 



pendous girth in the mellow, late- 
September sun in all its golden glory. 
"They can't beat it," I said to my- 
self, and to the fair it went. And do 
you know that the fool judges didn't 
have any more sense than to pass it 
by and stick the ribbon that carried 
that dollar onto a fat, heavy, orange- 
colored globe that wasn't half as big 
around as my own, and left me broken- 
hearted! Mine was flat on top and 
bottom to be sure, but any tapeline 
in the world would have convinced any 
committee with the ability to read 
plain figures and measure accurately 
that I was clearly entitled to win! 
And so came, like a bolt from the blue, 
what still seems to me to have been the 
first truly bitter disappointment of 
my life. I have had some other dis- 
appointments since, but none that 
made a more profound impression. 
And father got his too. A favorite 
trotting nag of his "broke" badly 
coming down the home-stretch of that 
[169] 



The Black Swans 



little old half-mile track and was 
beaten under the wire by at least two 
lengths in the deciding heat. After 
listening to his comment upon that 
performance, and the unprintable re- 
marks of the trainer who at the critical 
moment had driven the poor little bay 
mare off her feet, I began to realize 
that I was not the only one with a 
grievance against the world, going 
home that night a sadder but perhaps 
wiser youngster. 

This incident recalled from boyhood 
days may serve as well as any other 
to suggest, even if faintly, the good 
actually accomplished everywhere by 
these competitions. Experience is the 
only school whose lessons are taken 
home and long remembered. This one 
taught me several things worth know- 
ing. 

There is an old saying to the effect 

that each crow fondly thinks its own 

young white; that is, better and more 

beautiful and more wonderful than 

[170] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 

any other crowlets that ever happened. 
All the other crows know the truth, 
and sooner or later these doting par- 
ents discover that their own progeny 
are no whiter than their sisters, cousins 
and aunts of crow-land. 

Another thing; the casting of my 
mammoth pumpkin into the discard 
at this county fair taught me once 
for all that mere size, mere stature, 
mere girth, mere bulk, mere pounds 
avoirdupois, do not necessarily mean 
the most quality, and aiford no guar- 
antee whatever of superior fitness or 
desirability. On the contrary, when 
my big pumpkin was cut open it was so 
coarse-grained that when chopped into 
chunks it was not even relished spe- 
cially by either cows or pigs, all of which 
simply means that the finer fibers 
rarely accompany the ranker growths 
in either the animal or the vegetable 
kingdoms, and the county fair enforces 
these and kindred lessons just as effec- 
tually as do International Expositions. 

[171] 



The Black Swans 



Some years after the boyhood 
tragedy herein mentioned, I attended 
a show of the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England held in a held 
adjacent to the grand old park at 
Warwick Castle, not far from Leaming- 
ton. This world-famous exhibition is a 
"movable feast," not possessing a 
permanent home and equipment as is 
the case with the leading American 
shows of like character; the idea in 
Great Britain being to bring the bene- 
fits of the show home to the very doors 
of the people in all sections of the 
country by shifting it from year to 
year to various parts of the kingdom. 
One year it may be at Bristol, the 
next at Carlisle or York, and so on all 
around among the larger county towns 
and cities; local assistance being given 
in each case, with the Royal Society's 
funds drawn upon for general expense. 
The Warwick show of which I speak 
was held under the Presidency of the 
then Prince of Wales, subsequently 
[172] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 

King Edward VII., and His Royal 
Highness was not only present, but 
took the keenest possible interest in 
all its details. I knew that at his own 
favorite Sandringham the Prince had 
Southdown sheep and Shorthorns and 
other useful and admirable types of 
domestic animals, and that he took a 
personal interest in them. I was 
scarcely prepared, however, to learn 
at Warwick of his intimate knowledge 
of the breeds and their points of 
excellence. These wonderful exhibi- 
tions of all the finest types for which 
Great Britain has so long been famous 
are usually held in July out in the open; 
temporary stalls with canvas covering 
to protect the animals from the sun 
or rains being the only shelter pro- 
vided. On the opening day I was so 
fortunate as to meet the Prince in that 
section of the park allotted to the 
cattle, "doing" the show on foot 
incognito, like any other interested 
visitor, in order to avoid the crowds 

[173] 



The Black Swans 



that always surrounded him when on 
official inspection tours. His only 
companion was Sir Jacob Wilson, one 
of the foremost agricultural author- 
ities of his day in Britain. I only wish 
that our American president and ex- 
presidents, our senators and cabinet 
officers, our men of prominence in 
civic, commercial or political life, could 
have listened that day to Prince Ed- 
ward's comments on the animals as 
they were shown. His interest was not 
perfunctory, his knowledge not super- 
ficial. He knew the cattle as he knew 
the sheep and horses. He was not 
necessarily impressed by scale. He 
knew correct and faulty conformation. 
He was pleased and gratified beyond 
measure to see such a marvelous 
presentation of England's pastoral 
wealth. He was more capable of 
judging in the prize-ring than thou- 
sands of American farmers even, saying 
nothing of the conceded incapacity in 
such important matters among those 

[174] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 

who are most conspicuous in the social 
and pictorial columns of the American 
press. 

I use this case of the late King 
Edward merely to illustrate a broad 
national difference of viewpoint in 
respect to certain things lying at the 
very roots of Anglo-Saxon greatness. 
I afterwards visited other Royal shows, 
and always found the landed gentry, 
peers of the realm, members of the 
royal family and government, men 
whose names were familiar in high 
finance and public service, mingling 
with the sturdy tenantry, the herdsmen 
and the shepherds; and every man 
knew what he was looking at, and 
could appreciate quality wherever pres- 
ent. They cherish their well-kept 
herds and flocks as an integral, a vital 
part of a great inheritance. They 
regard it as a duty as well as a personal 
privilege to thoroughly inform them- 
selves in respect to these truly valuable 
national possessions, and in the sun- 

[175] 



The Black Swans 



light of assured patronage and gen- 
erous co-operation from the highest 
sources, even the humblest ''hewer of 
wood or drawer of water" in all 
Britain has constant inspiration to 
stand by the soil and its choicest 
products; and so it is that ''over 
there" a reputation for outstanding 
skill in the gentle arts of agriculture 
means certain reward and public ap- 
preciation, and father hands it down to 
son as a prized possession. 

When John McCormack, the Irish 
tenor whose voice is loved by millions 
of Americans, offered his services to the 
government at Washington to serve 
during the great war in any capacity 
the President might deem best, he was 
urged to sing our patriotic popular 
songs throughout the length and 
breadth of the land, and if so disposed 
turn over the proceeds to the Red 
Cross. In pointing out the real value 
of this form of service the President is 
quoted as having said: "Somebody 
[176] 



A Pumpkin and a Prince 



must keep the fountains of sentiment 
flowing!" Woodrow Wilson is an apt 
phrase-maker. Probably no president 
since the lamented McKinley has pos- 
sessed that gift in greater degree, and 
in these few words he has given expres- 
sion to a truth, the important bearing 
of which is not sufficiently recognized 
by so-called practical people. 

One might say that there seems little 
room for sentiment in the "tending of 
cattle and tossing of clover;" that 
there is little place for the play of the 
imagination in the effort of trying to 
make two blades of grass grow where 
only one came forth before. That the 
evolution of new and finer types of 
grains and fruits and flowers is an 
occupation fit for the merely patient 
plodder only. That the creation and 
maintenance of choice herds and flocks 
is a task to which only dull minds may 
profitably address themselves. Wash- 
ington on his loved Mount Vernon 
acres proved the hollowness of such 

[177] 



The Black Swans 



assumptions. America seems destined 
now to step into a position among the 
nations of the earth that bids fair to 
mean world leadership henceforth. But 
this should not simply mean possible 
supremacy in financial or commercial 
enterprises. Indeed, if in the unfolding 
of our future, we shall give to history 
no names fit to match those of Bake- 
well, Ellman, Tomkins, Cruickshank 
or McCombie, we shall not have 
recorded full-rounded progress as a 
people. These names mean nothing to 
you? Well, they should; and if you 
don't believe it, then the next time 
you come to Chicago pay a visit to the 
Saddle and Sirloin Club — preferably 
when the International Live Stock 
Exposition is in progress — and you 
may then possibly share with me the 
belief that not all the great Americans 
of the years to come — men with brains 
and sentiment and patriotic impulse — 
will build their biggest monuments 
either in Wall Street or in Pittsburg. 

[178] 




CHAPTER XIII 

The Flames that Clarify 

THERE are still other fires all 
normal people like, such as one 
that I have just helped tend, for in- 
stance, the burning of dead vines and 
stalks and weeds and leaves, the rem- 
nants of a garden which for weeks 
has been a generous provider. How 
easily the hardened roots release their 
former grip upon the rich black mellow 
soil! They know their race is run, and 
for the most part give up gracefully. 
A few sturdy ones, however, that I had 
thought were done with life made a re- 
sistance altogether unexpected, but 
after I had torn and broken down a 
plant that was not ready yet to go, 
I knew at once that I had interfered 

[179] 



The Black Swans 



with some well-formulated plan of Na- 
ture, and was sorry. 

We fancy we know so much more 
about a lot of things in this world than 
our common Mother knows. We are 
always and forever assuming to im- 
prove on the universal scheme, cor- 
recting the Almighty and his laws, and 
all the while the All-wise makes of us 
and all the best-laid schemes of men 
(not mice) a mockery. We can by 
force of arms, by acts of parliaments, 
intervene successfully for a time, we 
fondly think, with the general plan, 
but the tables on w^hich men carve 
their edicts crumble into nothingness, 
and drifting sands entomb the walls 
of Babylon, whenever Nature cares to 
resume the sway she never really has 
resigned. I had no business pulling 
up that big Helianthus before its 
seeds had fully ripened, but that will 
not prevent some other sunflower from 
fulfilling its allotted mission. You 
can't overthrow Nature by taking one 
TiSol 



The Flames that Clarify 



life or blasting one bright hope. You 
cannot change the leopard's spots by 
caging him; neither can he change 
them himself, try in the jungle as he 
may. 

Enough green stuff goes on the 
autumn garden fire to fill the air with 
smoke that is both blue and fragrant. 
What is there in the odor of the burning 
of dry grass and stems and twigs that 
makes such wide appeal to human 
sensibilities } Every small boy knows 
well what I mean by this; and every 
sane small boy is enough of a primeval 
savage to scent in that smoke some 
far-off simple former life in forest 
glens. 

Do you know that within the city 
limits of Chicago is one spot where 
touch with man's natural environment 
may almost be attained.^ Here and 
now I want to pay glad tribute to the 
man who was wise enough to place in 
Jackson Park that Heaven-born in- 
spiration called "The Wooded Island." 
[i8i] 



The Black Swans 



I suppose it may have been Frederick 
Law Olmstead. He had a lot to do, I 
believe, with the landscapes now so 
dear to all who know the former site 
of the World's Fair of 1893. But 
whoever did it builded his own great 
monument, and generations yet un- 
born will seek the solace of its isola- 
tion. No road-way crosses to it. 
Arched bridges lead you from the busy 
drives across lagoons in which big 
forest trees have plunged their roots. 
The motors and the trolleys are not 
there. The birds know it well enough. 
Trust them for that, and squirrels 
once scampered everywhere until long 
protection so increased their number 
that it was found too many nests were 
being robbed, and they were banished. 
At least so I've been told. 

One day last March when the sun 
had whispered something to the trees 
that made the willows and the dog- 
woods start, I strolled across this 
Wooded Isle. The grass was showing 
[182] 



The Flames that Clarify 



faintly green, and through the branches 
bare the lake winds roared. You see 
the island at its best, I think, on such 
a day. November though would do as 
well as March. The roses will be gone 
and the summer crowds that frequent 
it will not be there. But you want the 
tree-tops bending to the pressure of 
strong winds if you would hear the 
organ-chords that fill that silent, solemn 
sylvan auditorium. And you may be 
so lucky as to find the workmen burn- 
ing brush, the trimmings from the trees. 
If so, the incense rising from those fires 
will do the rest. And when you turn 
away and retrace your steps across 
the arching bridge that sends you back 
to boulevards, I wager you will almost 
wish with me you wore old overalls 
and had to work your way along with 
axe instead of pen; at least for one long 
happy day. 

If you leave the island by the 
southern bridge you will see French's 
majestic statue of the Republic — the 

[183] 



The Black Swans 



recently erected replica of the one in 
staff that welcomed the nations of the 
world in Columbian Exposition days. 
The fading of that picture is Chicago's 
greatest tragedy. There flowered the 
architecture and the allied arts of all 
the ages; a poet's dream of one short 
summer night, a mirage too beautiful, 
too evanescent to really exist save in 
imagination. But it served its splen- 
did purpose. Its profound, refining 
influence upon a people none too famil- 
iar with "the beauty that was Greece," 
the "grandeur that was Rome," and, 
may I add, the inspiration that is 
France, long since became a prized 
national possession. Only a trace of 
the grand aggregation of palatial 
structures now remains. The Fine 
Arts Building alone of all the exhibition 
halls was temporarily preserved. A 
great fire swept away most of them, 
thus saving a laborious demolition by 
hand labor. And the Art Hall's days 
are numbered. 



184 



The Flames that Clarify 



Strictly classic in spirit and outline, 
its crowning feature the low-set dome 
copied from the Campo Santo in 
Genoa, it is slowly but surely falling 
into ruin, and, when the Field Museum 
is finally completed downtown, the 
old Columbian relic's last days will 
have come. Rabida and the caravels 
are still with us. The German Building 
is still permitted to stand near the 
lake, and a little north of that the old 
Iowa state pavilion may still be seen. 
Upon the Wooded Island the quaint 
artistic contribution of Japan yet bears 
its testimony to the skill of the artisans 
of the land of Fusiyama and the cherry 
blossoms. A soul-inspiring marshaling 
of the resources of a world at peace, this 
celebration of the four hundredth an- 
niversary of America's discovery. And 
as I write, the city by the lake is 
opening the gates upon a very different 
scene. The Government is showing to 
the people of the Middle West a 
glimpse of what is meant by war — 

[185] 



The Black Swans 



the war that means the re-birth, the 
re-consecration of America. And this 
brings vividly to mind that there are 
other fires that differ from all others 
herein mentioned; the sulphurous 
flames of Hell itself let loose by one 
man's hand without so much as "by 
your leave" from subjects blind to 
their own misconception of their des- 
tiny and deaf to the voice of liberty and 
law. 

It seems not very long ago I made a 
daily official call at the United States 
Government Building on the Rue des 
Nations on the banks of the Seine, in 
the heart of Paris, while the last of the 
series of Universal Expositions held 
by the French was in progress in 1900. 
The world was not yet disillusioned. 
Germany was there our neighbor on 
one side, and Italy on the other. 
Around the Champ de Mars were 
grouped the buildings that housed the 
products of the arts and industries of 
every clime; a brilliant artistic triumph 
F186I 



The Flames that Clarify 

of French genius, with the flags of all 
the nations overhead. The flowering 
of the chestnut trees in May had 
ushered in the great event with the 
music, pomp and pageantry of peace. 
Picard and Delcasse gave gracious 
welcome in the name of France around 
the rich Elysee Palace banquet board. 
There was no thought in any mind, 
save one perhaps, of Verdun or of 
Vimy Ridge. The German High Com- 
missioner was there, but made no 
reference to Louvain nor Liege. The 
Russian prince that sat upon my left 
that night spoke not of Lenine, Bol- 
sheviki nor Trotsky, and on a certain 
other happy day at St. Germaine there 
was no mention of the Marne. The 
Bois was gay with pleasure-seeking 
crowds by day; the Champs Elysees 
gleaming fairyland by night. 

It is hard to conceive the changes 
that these eighteen intervening years 
have wrought. It is difficult to under- 
stand how those feted guests so warmly 

[187] 



The Black Swans 



welcomed to that concord of the na- 
tions from beyond the Rhine could 
even then be plotting the hurling of 
unheard-of giant super-shells from fifty 
miles away into the very shadows of 
Notre Dame itself. Thank God for 
Joffre, Haig and Foch, and for our 
Pershing, and for all their men! May 
they never sheath their swords until 
those flags of nations once I saw along 
the Seine are streaming yet again 
together in the sky, this time above 
Berlin, with that of Wilhelm unter 
alles. 

The garden must be cleared forever 
of that noxious weed, unbridled power. 
The poison ivies of the Prussian wood 
must be consigned to all-consuming 
flames. Then, and only then, can our 
children, and our children's children, 
go out in safety through the world to 
pluck the fruits and flowers that grow 
along the paths of peace and honest 
toil. 



[i88 




The Disappearing Road 




CHAPTER XIV 

A Farewell "Hike'' 

THIS morning I got into my 
''knickers" and a good stout pair 
of army shoes and took the road. It 
was Saturday, too, and the golf links 
looked inviting enough, but the season 
was rapidly coming to an end, and I 
preferred a tramp outside, because I 
knew that within a week we would be 
back in town where I was certain to be 
uncomfortable for a time among the 
crowds after having been so long in the 
open country. The air was soft and 
cool, the sun just bright enough and the 
fields and hills and distant points were 
sleeping in an atmosphere that told 
the story old, yet ever new, of summer 
gone. A note of universal gladness 
[189] 



The Black Swans 



attends the April shower. A sense 
of peace and plenty fills the spirit 
when the wheat and oat fields and 
the meadows yield their harvests, but 
today the rustling corn blades and the 
brown and silent wood-lands speak 
soothingly of rest and sleep and finished 
tasks. 

I had not gone far before I overtook 
an old friend of mine whose business 
this particular day was evidently the 
same as my own — the draining of the 
few remaining drops still hanging upon 
the lips of a season's emptied cup. I 
found him busy with a bunch of 
goldenrod that had survived most of 
its companions of the roadside and was 
still fresh and full of life. I stopped 
and watched the busy gleaner at his 
belated work. I fancy he was thinking 
that the sweet clovers of August were 
rather better producers for his par- 
ticular purpose, but his persistence 
apparently met with some reward, and 
presently he spread his wings. 
[190] 



A Farewell "Hike'' 



A little farther on some bumble bees 
were on a thistle bloom, and sitting 
down besides the humble plant that 
seemed to have extracted honey by 
some subtle process from a stiif clay 
soil, I held the stems within my hand 
and with a glass observed the searching 
quest for food. The head of a bumble 
bee is not in general shape unlike that 
of an elephant's, and the comparison 
does not altogether end with that, 
for it has a proboscis of some sort 
that finds its way deep down into the 
minute recesses of each pink thistle 
tube. No possible opening escapes 
their probe. They did not mind me in 
the least of course. When a boy I 
used to kill them, and pulling their 
bodies in half would extract the honey 
sac and found it sweet. But I have 
more respect now for life in any form, 
and did not resume my tramp until 
this industrious black-and-yellow trio 
had lazily taken themselves off to 
some other lingering way-side growth. 

[191] 



The Black Swans 



We now approach a pasture. The 
grazing still is good, and in a corner 
near the road a group of dairy cows, 
some standing, some lying down, chew 
their cud complacently, and turn big 
eyes and ears my way as I come near. 
They are mostly Jersey grades and 
friendly. I stop and visit with them 
for a time. One of the younger set in 
particular seems sociably inclined. She 
comes up to the fence, and I speak to 
her. She may be of the pure blood. 
Her fawn-like features show some 
breeding at any rate, and her shapely 
udder and well-placed appendages 
thereto are full of promise. Is it any 
wonder people become attached to 
and fond of well-bred animals.^ As 
old Jorrocks of fox-hunting fame used 
to say, ''Give me a bit of blood, 
whether it be in a 'orse, a 'ound or a 
woman!" Surely it tells. Across the 
way there is another bunch of cattle 
of the genus "scrub." Poor things! 
They are not to blame for their own 
[192] 



A Farewell "Hike'' 



wretched personalities and very limited 
capacities, but what good farmer would 
wish to board them or see them about 
the place? And what boy growing up 
in their company could ever develop a 
genuine fondness for the farm? They 
neither appeal to your affections nor 
make any good return for the valuable 
food they eat. But look into the 
intelligent, friendly eyes of this little 
Jersey, with her graceful horns, her 
yellow skin and silky coat, her dainty 
limbs and swelling milk veins, and 
behold one of the accomplishments of 
man in fixing fast in animal form the 
useful and the beautiful. 

It has been many a moon since I 
milked my quota of an old-time herd, 
but there is worse employment in this 
world, as I now know. Even yet it 
seems to me I hear the cow bells in 
the lower pasture as the cattle work 
their way at close of day up towards 
the gate; for they, like the rest of us, 
are creatures of habit; and I recall 

[193] 



The Black Swans 



that in the winter time each individual 
member of the herd knew her own 
particular stall inside the barn, and 
rarely made mistake in seeking it. 
Each knew that a bed of clean, dry 
straw had been prepared before they 
entered for the night, and that all 
troughs and mangers were well-filled 
and waiting. And when the storm 
went driving by as a bitter night came 
on and the big bare trees along the 
creek were lashed and coated with the 
driving snow or sleet, and I had gone 
to bed, how satisfied I used to feel to 
know that those four-footed friends 
were warm and snug inside and did not 
want! 

I am sorry I cannot say that I saw 
very many well-bred animals this day 
of my October gypsying along this 
country road. It is a district populated 
mainly by folk of German birth or 
blood, and whatever of thrift or other 
virtues they may possess, an apprecia- 
tion of improved varieties of domestic 

[194] 



A Farewell" Hike'' 



animals does not seem to exist to any 
great extent among them. With all 
her boasted efficiency and "Kultur," 
Germany has yet to give the world 
anything much worth while in the 
realm of animal husbandry, as com- 
pared with her neighbors of Belgium, 
France, the Netherlands, the Channel 
Islands or Great Britain. I did see 
now and then a horse that might have 
had a Percheron sire, but these were 
few and far between. And this re- 
minds me of another country road I 
traveled once in sunny France in the 
charming little valley of the Huisne 
(pronounced ''Ween") where white- 
walled cottages and cosy little homes 
with gardens filled with wondrous 
flowers and sweet old-fashioned roses 
bloomed, and apple blossoms spread 
their fragance far and wide just as 
they do in Normandy. In all the world 
there are no greater pets than those 
big fine mares and foals attended in 
that favored land by the women and 

[195] 



The Black Swans 



the children of each household. Is 
it any wonder, these big honest black 
and gray horses of heavy draft that 
you see in daily use upon our city 
streets and cornbelt farms, are as 
gentle as so many well-trained dogs, 
that almost any child can handle 
them? We are in France's debt for 
many things, and not the least of these 
is the great horse that is such a factor 
in the moving of the nation's plows 
and heavy trucks. You would not of 
course expect to see the Percherons 
numerous in a Bremen township. You 
will see geese though and horses of 
which you could not be very proud, 
and sometimes women, too, that are 
old before their time and overworked. 
But it is time we were on the homeward 
trail. 

I have been resting as I have thus 
been soliloquizing beneath a venerable 
Cottonwood that stands at the end of 
a row evidently planted by an early 
settler in these parts. These are of 
[196] 



A Farewell "Hike'' 



course quick-growing trees. How long 
they live I do not know, but this one 
of which I speak is not to hear its 
leaves rattling in this southwest wind 
for many seasons more. It is a giant 
of its sort; I should say near ten feet 
in circumference. That is conceding 
a diameter at its base of around 
three feet. Its main top branch has 
been lost in some gale years ago. It 
stands thus crippled and decaying in 
its gray old age awaiting, like any 
other living thing that has had its 
great day on earth, the end of every- 
thing. A decrepit wretch in human 
form, probably from the county poor- 
farm over there on the other road, 
went by a few moments ago, and I 
classed them together and knew that 
the fate of both differs in no wise from 
that which is overtaking a brown dust- 
covered grasshopper that just jumped 
feebly by me on the grass. 

And so we draw near home. Not 
far from where the black swans nestle 

[197] 



The Black Swans 



on the hearth there is this late fall 
day a spot that has for me an infinitely 
greater charm than any picture gallery 
of which this world can boast. It is a 
patch of woodland that men have not 
yet touched. Briars and burrs and 
thickly-matted bluegrass contest with 
all sorts of underbrush for possession 
of the soil beneath the trees. You will 
have to fight your way into this tangled 
hidden sanctuary, but once inside you 
will feel and know that you are a part 
of all of it, and the gray clouds floating 
away there towards the lake shall pass 
on over the great city with all its 
miseries and leave you to your thoughts 
and prayers and the blessed solace of 
close fellowship with Nature clad in 
beauty that no human hand can imi- 
tate nor words describe. Wild grapes 
and woodbine help themselves to the 
first supporting branch they find. Here 
and there the burly bodies of great 
oaks speak eloquently of strength and 
patient, silent growth through the un- 
[198] 



A Farewell "Hike'' 



counted dawns and sunsets of the 
passing years. Through the tree tops 
a glimpse of sky, part blue, part gray, 
and all around the soft rich tints of 
woodland tapestries woven in colors 
only found in Nature's northern arbo- 
real laboratories. The intangible grad- 
ations from green to brown, rose-pink 
to richest crimson, from pale lemon to 
deep orange, defy definition or inter- 
pretation. And tomorrow other tints 
will show. 

As I now return to the cottage walk, 
a squirrel frisks by on his way to the 
big trees in the grove. Acorns have 
been falling fast for many days upon 
the lawn. One of our trees in par- 
ticular seems to have produced this 
year most bountifully. And today we 
made a great discovery. Just opposite 
our bed-room window we had long 
ago fastened a little so-called "wren- 
house" to one of the biggest burr-oak 
limbs. For some reason or other the 
birds had never used it. I imagine 

[ 199] 



The Black Swans 



because they figured that predatory 
cats or squirrels might reach it too 
easily. The opening in this tiny house 
was very small. We had observed, 
however, that some creature of the 
wild had been busy of late enlarging 
the entrance. We had never had the 
good fortune to catch any of these 
woodmen at the task; so were un- 
certain about the scheme in view. 
Anyhow some one had now crammed 
that little box full to overflowing with 
acorns, against some day of need, and 
we of course credit this bit of real 
preparedness to the squirrels. None 
of them live in the trees about the 
house, but if the coming winter should 
prove as hard as was the last, this 
extra store might very acceptably sup- 
plement the main larder located deeper 
in the woods. So much by way of a les- 
son from these little folk in the matter 
of saving while the saving's good. 

All day long I have seen flitting 
through the trees small birds innumer- 

[ 200 ] 



A Farewell "Hike'' 



able that do not spend their summers 
here. I do not profess to know their 
names. They are from the north and 
tomorrow will be farther south. The 
annual migration is at its height, and 
we ourselves are joining in it. Those 
fat bronze turkeys foraging contentedly 
among the corn shocks would migrate 
too if they were wise. 

I took back with me at the close of 
this really perfect day the last of our 
dark-blue larkspurs, decorated with a 
lacy spray of woodbine, the five- 
leaved clusters of which were almost as 
brilliant as Poinsettias at Christmas 
time. And that was the last floral 
offering I was able to bring this year 
to the household gods. 

The darkness settles early, and as the 
night is cloudless I improve the op- 
portunity, before settling down to a 
final session with the fire, to bid the 
bright October sky good-bye. I know 
perfectly well that when we begin 
driving up and down the city boule- 
[201 ] 



The Black Swans 



vards, when the electric Hghts are on, 
there will be little use trying to visit 
even with the Big Dipper itself, saying 
nothing about Cassiopeia. And so I 
pass out into the open beyond the gate- 
way through the hedge. Low in the 
east old Orion is rising. Andromeda 
is glowing over-head and in the west 
my steel-blue favorite Vega! Stars 
of the quiet autumn night! Change- 
less and steadfast as thy fires shall be 
my love for dear old Dumbiedykes and 
all its treasured memories. 





CHAPTER XV 

Taps 

THE last fire of another year Is 
dying on the hearth. The swans 
are flying low — now very low — and 
presently they will fold their fluttering 
wings and pass into the shadows that 
shall last until the fires of yet another 
spring shall be rekindled by our own 
or other hands. 'Tis said the sweetest 
of all songs sung by swans are always 
their very last, and, as our walls re- 
flect the gathering gloom, in fancy I 
can hear what seems to be a fond 
farewell to all the joys the vanished 
hours have brought. 

We are closing the cottage tomorrow. 
It is the end of our sixteenth season 
within its walls. Somehow the little 
[203] 



The Black Swans 



place has grown to be a part of life 
itself. We have banked the fire and 
locked the entrance gate and left the 
old clock standing there alone each 
fall with ever-deepening regret, be- 
cause each time has brought the 
thought that this may be the last. 

We always trust we may come back 
again to see the hedge-rows and the 
iris wake, but maybe we shall not. 
The cricket that until tonight has 
chirped about the hearth is gone. The 
frost has sapped all floral life outside. 
Above the general wreck a drooping 
salvia only shows its scarlet bloom, 
but it too, like Omar's Bird of Time, 
"has but a little way to go." All things 
come to an end at last, even the most 
idyllic days in rare sequestered nooks. 
Conditions change, and circumstances; 
and we change with them. Turns come 
at length in every path. 

The spring-time and the summer of 
our days at Dumbiedykes have passed. 
That much is sure. The autumn now 
[204] 



Taps 

is here, and the same unchanging 
laws that govern in the garden and the 
grove apply as well to those who plant 
and plan. A few short weeks ago the 
lawn was clean and green, well-trimmed 
and comely. Tonight it is strewn with 
the oak leaves of accomplished fact. 
-There is no longer quick response to 
the discharging clouds. The sun has 
lost its power. The green has turned 
to gold. The gold is on its way to dust. 
The last log on the hearth is turning 
now to ash. The hands of the clock 
still move forever forward; never back. 
There is no force in earth or air, no 
alchemy in sky or cloud, can stay the 
year's decline. 

Would that we might live those years 
again! There has been much that has 
been truly bright and beautiful, and 
many golden hours have set an impress 
on our hearts which time shall not 
efface. And yet there have been roses 
set that never flowered, and weeds and 
thorns have come sometimes where 
[205] 



The Black Swans 



finer growths were sought. There have 
been shadows dark, and bats and fear- 
some cries of owls, as well as happy 
May-time songs in leafy bowers. 
Which is to say that this, our life at 
Dumbiedykes, has simply been the 
world-old blend of sunshine and of 
storm. 

October's mellow haze has come. 
The winter waits. We know not what 
it has in store. Some time, somewhere, 
perhaps around the evening lamp, 
when north winds howl around your 
Dumbiedykes or mine, when thoughts 
of springs and summers past shall 
only be as happy dreams that linger 
long in memory, perchance we'll meet 
again. 

And so we will not say "Farewell," 
but just "Good night." 




PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY 
AND SONS COMPANY AT THE 
LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL. 



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^T^'ryrr^:^ 




